If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Galatians chapter 4, and we'll be reading Galatians 4, verses 4 through 7. During this Advent season, we're going to be looking at one of my favorite Christmas passages. It's a passage that doesn't often get a lot of airtime during the Christmas season, but hopefully you'll be able to see why it's such a powerful text. for our understanding of the meaning of the birth of Christ. In Galatians chapter four, obviously we'll be taking a break from our sermon series through first Corinthians. We'll resume that, Lord willing, in the new year. But today we're gonna be starting to walk through Galatians four, verses four through seven, where the apostle Paul talks about how God sent his son into the world at exactly the right time. And in this passage, every single phrase is really packed full of meaning. And so we'll be looking at each of the phrases during our Advent sermons this year. I'm well aware that we have the Lord's Supper and we have a congregational meeting following the service. Someone told me that we should keep this short and sweet. And I would tell them and tell you that I'm always trying to be sweet. But today we'll be thinking about the timing of Christmas in Galatians 4, verses 4 through 7. It's only one phrase, there's a lot to think about in it, but I do think it will be short as well. Let's stand as we share God's word, Galatians 4, verses 4 through 7. Such a powerful passage, let's hear God's word together. 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. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. This is God's word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but God's word endures forever and ever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we turn our attention to your word, We are reminded once again of how much we need the help of the Holy Spirit. Without your Holy Spirit giving us understanding, your words just go in one ear and out the other. And so, Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would work through the preaching of your word to apply these truths to our hearts, May you convince us in our hearts that Jesus is your son. He is our savior. He is the Lord of glory. He is the one you sent into the world when the fullness of time had come. We pray that you would fill our hearts with the joy of the gospel as we consider this passage in the days ahead. And may you comfort us with Christ. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Would you please be seated? I'm sure you have heard the phrase, timing is everything. Timing is everything. There's a lot of different contexts where that phrase might be used. You might think of a stand-up comedian and delivering his lines, and you might say, timing is everything, when it comes to delivering those lines in the right way, at the right time, to have the intended effect. You might think of a baseball player stepping up to the plate and trying to hit the fast pitch. And you might say timing is everything for that player, that batter, to connect the bat with the ball to get a good hit. Or you might think about making a certain request. Maybe you're going to your boss and you're going to be asking for a raise. And you want to catch him in a good mood and at the right time. And so you might say timing is everything for asking for that raise. Or a man falls in love with a woman, and he decides that he wants to marry her, and so he's going to propose to her, and he goes and buys a ring, and he thinks about the proposal, and when it comes to that proposal, timing is everything. Well, there's a lot of different contexts where that phrase that we know could be applied, but it certainly could be applied when it comes to the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. We can see timing is everything. We're told here that when God sent his son into the world, it was when the time had fully come. that it was at the right time that God sent His Son to be our Savior. If you've noticed throughout the Bible, when it talks about the gospel, it often speaks of it as something that showed up at the right time, God's time. For example, when Jesus begins His earthly ministry in Mark 1 15, we're told that He went out preaching, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand to repent and believe the gospel. Or the Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, he says there's one God and there's one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. Or Paul says in another place in Romans 5, he says at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Our Jesus throughout his earthly ministry would say things like, My time has not yet come, or my time is drawing near. And it's a recognition that everything that happened in the gospel was at the exact timing of our sovereign God. When the fullness of time had come, that's when God sent His Son. You might picture an hourglass, and you have all the grains of sand of God's predetermined time that are to take place before His Son goes into the world. And when that last grain of sand falls from the top of the hourglass to the bottom, that is when God said, Son, go down into the world, be incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and be the Savior of my people. It was according to God's time. And I think as we reflect this morning just on that phrase that's so pregnant with meaning, the fullness of time, we'll be reminded of the fact that God sent His Son into the world at the right time, therefore we can trust God at any time. When we know that God's timing of the incarnation was perfect, we can trust God throughout time because we know that He is fully in control of every moment, every second, every hour, every day. He is the God who is truly the Ancient of Days. He's truly sovereign over time. So let's think for a moment this morning, short and sweet, about some things that we can say about this phrase, the fullness of time. First of all, we can surely say that this fullness of time was a predestined time. It was a predestined time. It was a time that God had determined in advance. Now when you read that phrase, fullness of time, you're immediately confronted with God's relationship to time. Of course we understand, the Bible teaches us, that God doesn't exist like we do within time, being subject to it, going through it, as we do. But God exists outside of time. He is actually eternal. It shows us the incomprehensibility of God because our finite minds can't fully understand that. God has no beginning and He has no end. Isaiah 57, 15 says that He inhabits eternity. Think about that. He inhabits eternity. It says in Psalm 90 in verse 2 that before the mountains were brought forth, God ever formed the earth and the world. From everlasting to everlasting, He's God. He exists outside of time. And God created time along with the world. In the beginning, that was the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth. He created matter, and He created space, and He created time. And God is sovereign over time. We are subject to time, but God is not subject to time. Time is subject to God. Everything that happens in the history of the world, not just the birth of Christ, happens according to God's predetermined time. We know that we talk about the decrees of God, and our catechism defines those decrees of God as His eternal purpose. According to the counsel of His will, whereby for His own glory He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. God has a plan, and He has a plan before time began. He has an eternal plan. And when it comes to His Son coming into the world, sending forth His Son, the most important event in human history, the event that separates the timeline into B.C., before Christ, and A.D., and Odomenean, the year of our Lord, God did not leave that to chance. God did not leave that to a whim or just what would happen. It wasn't like God was changing His mind as He was experiencing time. But rather God planned the exact time for that central miracle of Christianity to occur. God becoming man. The great precondition of our salvation, without which He couldn't die on a cross, He couldn't rise again. The Word had to become flesh for our salvation. And it happened when that fullness of time had come. The idea is after the exact amount of time had elapsed. In the Bible it talks about Kronos time and Kairos time. Kronos time is a duration of time. Kairos time is the exact moment in time. And what Galatians 4.4 is saying, that Kronos time, that exact duration of time from the creation of the world to the coming of Christ had elapsed. And when that moment came, That predetermined time, that time according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, which God's hand and plan had predestined to take place. When that took place, God sent forth His Son. It was a predestined time. We could also say that it was a promised time. A promised time. In the context of the book of Galatians, the apostle Paul is talking about the promise of the gospel. And he makes it very clear that that promise of the gospel does not first come to man in the New Testament. But that promise of the gospel goes back to Abraham. He says, if you look back into chapter 3 of Galatians 3, in verse 8, he says this in the scripture, For seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, and you shall all the nations be blessed. Notice what Galatians 3 says. God preached the gospel to Abraham, saying that in his seed, in his offspring, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Paul goes on to say in Galatians 3 and verse 16, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say to offsprings, plural, referring to many, but to one and to your offspring who is Christ. So God had promised that an offspring of Abraham would come in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. We know that Paul could have gone back further than Abraham, couldn't he? He could have gone back all the way to the Garden of Eden to talk about that offspring promise. When Adam and Eve had sinned against God and they had broken the covenant of works and they still had the forbidden fruit on their breath, God said to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, and he, the Messiah, will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel. And throughout the whole Bible, the whole Bible is a commentary on Genesis 3.15, that the offspring is coming, the offspring of the woman, the offspring of Abraham, the offspring of David. who will be the king, and who will be the savior, and who will bring God's blessing back into His creation. He will bring His blessing and make it flow far as the curse is found. There was a promise that immediately after mankind had broken the covenant of works, that God would make a covenant of grace. In the Old Testament, the people are waiting for that fulfillment. They are waiting in the days of Adam and Eve. They are waiting in the days of Noah when God saved eight and brought them safely through water. They were waiting in the days of Abraham. They were waiting in the days of Isaac and Jacob. They were waiting in the days of Moses. They were waiting in slavery. They were waiting in the wilderness. They were waiting when they were brought into their land at the time of Joshua. They were waiting when they were later sent into exile. They were waiting, looking forward to that promise. That time, think about Daniel. Remember when Daniel was hoping the exile would come to an end in 70 years, as Jeremiah had prophesied? And Daniel is told by the angel Gabriel, not 70 years, but 70 times seven years, 490 years. But when that time has elapsed, God will finish the transgression, he said to Daniel. He will put an end to sin. He will atone for iniquity. He will bring in everlasting righteousness. He will seal vision and profit. He will anoint a most holy place. God will fulfill his promises. through this child that is to come. So you see, the fullness of time is saying the promises are coming true. God's predetermined time is coming to pass. And the promises are coming true. The promises to the patriarchs, the promises... To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the promises to David, the promise of a new and better covenant. They're all coming true through the birth of Christ. A predestined time, a promised time. Thirdly, notice also, it was a prepared time. It was a prepared time. In the context of Galatians, Paul is talking about how God prepared the people by a promise, but he also prepared them in another way. After he had made the promises to Abraham, and Abraham was justified by faith, years later, God brought his people out of slavery in Egypt, and he brought them to Mount Sinai, and he made a covenant with them, and he gave the law to them. And in Galatians 3, in verse 19, it talks about this law. Galatians 3, 19 says, why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring, that's Christ, should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put into place by angels through an intermediary. And so essentially it goes on to talk about that law was because of the transgressions. It was to identify sin. And then in verse 21 and 22, it says that the law actually imprisoned everything under sin. It showed man's slavery to sin. It showed man's inability to keep God's commandments. And it imprisoned it all up under sin. And God was preparing His people by not just giving the promises, but also giving the law. Notice that it says there in verse 24 that the law was our guardian. until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. The word guardian is the Greek word paidagogos. And it comes from the Greco-Roman world where a father would hire a slave, a paedagogos, a guardian, to be the disciplinarian of his son until the son reached a certain age set by the father of maturity when he'd be emancipated from that disciplinarian. And that paedagogos, that manager, that guardian, that disciplinarian would make sure that the son got up in the morning and went to school and did his homework and would strike him if he did something wrong. And what Paul is saying is the law was given by God to be our disciplinary and to show us our need for a savior, to show us what sin is, to make sin exceedingly sinful. And in that law, God was preparing the people. He was teaching them about His holiness. He was teaching them about their sinfulness. And He was showing them about their need for grace. Because in that law that God made with Israel, that covenant He made at Mount Sinai, He gave them a sacrificial system. So that when they sin, they confess their sin, but they also sacrifice the blood of bulls and goats. But that blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. Because animal sin cannot, animal sacrifice can't atone for human sin, you need a human sacrifice to atone for human sin. And so it was all pointing forward, it was all preparing the people, it was all preparing the people for what? for what Paul calls the date set by the Father. Look in Galatians 4 in verse 1 and 2, I mean that the heir, this is the believers under the old covenant, as long as he is a child is no different from a slave, though he's the owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers, that's the law, until what? The date set by the Father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, we were enslaved to the elemental principles of the world, but, When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. You see, the time of preparation, the law leading us to Christ, the law leading us by the hand to show us our sin, that we needed Christ. And when that date that had been fixed by the Father came, when it had been sufficiently made clear that the people of Israel had broken the law in a thousand pieces, and they had been sent into exile, and they were under foreign oppressors, and all hope was lost at that time. The fullness of time, that last grain of sand came down to the bottom of the hourglass and God said, go. Go be the savior of my people, son. Go be born of the virgin. Go be placed under the law. Go suffer the temptations of the world. and fulfill that law, and then lay down your life on a cross to atone for the sins of my people. You will bear the weight of my wrath, but I will resurrect you from the grave, and you will be the sufficient Savior of all who trust in me." The prepared time, the predestined time, the promised time. Finally, it was the perfect time. It was the perfect time, this fullness of time. God is always on time. God prepared the world for the coming of Christ. He made it sure that the world was ripe and ready for His Son to be born. Scholars often point out three things, there's probably more than three things that could be pointed out that made the timing right for Jesus to come into the world. First, they'll point out the Pax Romana. The peace of Rome, it existed from 27 B.C. to A.D. 180. The world was, the civilized world was pretty much united under one empire. And there was peace during that time, and so there was the ability to travel and the ability for communication to be sent out. Also, there was the Roman road system. Roads that began being built in 300 B.C. and they would be built and built and built, 74,000 miles to help armies and goods and persons travel throughout the Roman Empire from the eastern side to the western side. These roads would later be used by the Apostle Paul to get the Gospel out and the roads were there. And also, everybody in the empire, the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, the language that was spoken was Koine Greek. The Greek language, and so you could communicate freely throughout the empire. People from different nationalities and different backgrounds could understand one another because of that Greek language, which would later be used to write every single New Testament book. James Stewart in his book, The Life and Teachings of Christ, explains the precision and the finesse of God's providence in this way. He says, quote, if Christ had come a century early, his gospel would have been blocked at every turn. blocked on the land by closed national frontiers, blocked on the ocean by the pirates who made the high seas impassable. But Christ came to a generation when Roman peace held the world, held it no doubt with an iron hand, but held it sure and far flung and unbroken, and men could hear the Bethlehem angels sing. God's providence in preparing the world for sending His Son at the perfect time. William Lane Craig also points out the precision of God's providence, even in the way that God prepared the world in terms of its population. This is fascinating. Listen to this. Human beings have existed for thousands of years on this planet before Christ's coming. But what's really crucial here is not the time involved, but rather the population of the world. The Population Reference Bureau estimates the number of people who have ever lived on this planet is about 105 billion people. Only 2% of them were born prior to the advent of Christ. 2% of the world's total throughout history population lived before Christ. Eric Kreps of the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research says, quote, God's timing could not have been more perfect. Christ showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world's population. God so loved the world that He gave His Son, and He sent His Son right at the exact right time. What does all this mean for us? Well, first of all, believer, don't you realize how privileged you are because of the time in which you live? And I don't mean your decade as we think that time, but I mean in the sense that you live anodominy, in the year of our Lord. You live on this side of the cross. Jesus told his own disciples, he said, many prophets and many wise men longed to see what you see. They longed to hear what you hear, but they were not able. What a privilege it is to live in this time. The Apostle Paul talked about in his sermon to the Athenians, the educated pagans of his day, he talked about the times of ignorance. The times of ignorance when God allowed the nations to walk in their own way, walk in the darkness of paganism. We were not born in the times of ignorance. The Apostle Paul says, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. And what a privilege it is that we live in an age where repentance is proclaimed, where faith in Christ is proclaimed, where remission of sins is available to the world. In his book on the impact of Christ for Western civilization, Tom Holland writes about the impact of Christ on our understanding of time. We've said it divides the timeline into BC and AD. But Tom Holland points out this, he says, whether in North Korea, or in the command structures of jihadi terrorist cells, there are so few ideologically opposed to the West that they are not sometimes obliged to employ the international dating system. When they do so, they are subliminally reminded of the claims made by Christianity about the birth of Christ. Time itself has been Christianized. By the coming of the Son into the world, time itself has been claimed by Christ. This is truly the year of our Lord. Time belongs to Him. He is the King. He is the one who has come in and He's claimed this time. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you're not yet repentant for your sins, you're not yet trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, you've not yet received salvation, let me ask you this, what time is it for you? According to 2 Corinthians 4 in verse 2, it says this, In a favorable time I've listened to you, in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time. Now is the day of salvation. If you're here, the fullness of time has come. The fullness of time is here. The day of salvation is here. Christ is here. The Savior is here, present in word and sacrament. He offers himself to you. that you must repent and believe in Him and receive eternal life in His name. When the fullness of time had come, then God sent forth His Son. But there's another thought we should be thinking about whenever we reflect on the fullness of time. The saints in the Old Testament were looking forward to the fullness of time coming and Christ being born. They were looking forward to the first coming of Christ. But the Bible also tells us there will be a second advent of Christ. There will be the return of Christ. And that date also is fixed by the Father. It is a date that will come. It is a date that is sure to come. It is just as predestined, just as promised, just as sure to come. And the sands of time are sinking. The sand is moving from the top of the hourglass to the bottom of the hourglass. And history is moving forward to one climactic cataclysmic moment, when the archangel shouts, when the trumpet of God blows, when Christ is told once again, son, go down, go down. to judge the living and the dead, to bring my kingdom from heaven to earth, to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory as far as the waters cover the sea. There's coming a day where man will be judged. There's coming a day where the creation will be restored, where the dead will be raised. And are we ready for that time? Are we ready for that time? We're only ready for that time. If we know the one who came in the fullness of time the first time, Jesus, who is our Emmanuel. He is God with us. He is the one who saves us from sin. He is the one who is represented for us in this Lord's Supper. The bread broken, the wine poured out, His body broken, His blood shed so that we could be saved. And what sweeter time is there to come to Him but in this Christianized time where He has claimed the whole world because He is King of kings and He is Lord of lords. You don't need to make Him Lord of your life, He is the Lord. You need to bow and recognize who He already is by virtue of His death and His resurrection and His ascension to the Father's right hand and receive the life and the blessing and the hope that are in Him. And what What a blessing it is and what joy it gives us when we know that we have received the one who came in the fullness of time to be our savior. Yes, the sands of time are sinking, we sing. The dawn of heaven breaks. The summer morn I've sighed for, the fair sweet morn awakes. Dark, dark has been the midnight, but day spring is at hand and glory, glory dwelleth. in Emmanuel's land. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we praise You for the gospel of Your Son. We praise You that He came in the fullness of time to be our Redeemer. We pray that You would write on our hearts this truth that we might trust You at any time, because You sent Your Son to be our Savior at exactly the right time. Seal these truths in our hearts. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.