Well, if you would turn in your Bibles to the book of Galatians, and we're going to pick up in chapter 3, the thought in chapter 3, reading on into chapter 4. And I did forget to make one announcement, and so I will make that here at this point. And that is that tomorrow at the UT Tyler campus, the RUF members are going to be helping freshmen move into the dorms, and so if any of you I know most of you are at work, but if any of you would like to help with them, let me know and I'll put you in contact with, or let James know, and he can tell you where to meet. But if you'd like to be there just to welcome the freshmen at UT and help them move into their dorm and make that contact with folks, we encourage you to be a part of that if that would work into your schedule. Our scripture reading this morning is going to be picking up the thought from Galatians 3.26 on through the seventh verse of chapter four, Galatians 3.26. Following the reading of scripture, we'll sing together the glory of pottery. Please stand for the reading of God's holy word. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. For those of you who are here on a regular basis, you know that a few weeks ago I completed preaching through the letter of Paul to the Philippians, and whenever that happens it's Not really traumatic, but it's thinking through what's next. I spoke with the elders and deacons. Where do you think it'd be good for us to go next? Well, we're in Isaiah in the evening, and we'll be there for a while. In fact, if you've neglected Isaiah because of all the judgment stuff in the first half, this is a great time to join us with it, because it's really good stuff right now. It's great. It's the great part of Isaiah. We've taken care of the tedious part, now you can come for the fun part of it. But we're going to be in Isaiah for a while yet in the evening, so we discussed it and thought it'd be good to stay in the New Testament, perhaps go to another epistle of Paul, but we settled on moving in the direction of a gospel. Now, for those that do come on Sunday evening, you know that it hadn't been that long, about three years, since we went through the gospel of Mark on our evening services. So why would we do a gospel again? Well, many of you aren't here for that. And some of you will remember that Mark Wheat, when he was here preaching on Sunday evenings, he went through good portions of the gospel of John. But the last time we considered a gospel account in the morning was 12 to 14 years ago. So it's been a little while. Some of you weren't here then, and some of you probably don't remember any of that then. So we're not going back to Luke, but we are going to begin to embark on a series on Matthew on Sunday mornings. Now, I want to give you a little bit of background to the book and thinking about that today and next week. This sermon today and the sermon next week will probably be more like a Sunday school lesson lecture than a sermon as such. Hopefully it'll be edifying to you as we do that. But the question that I really want to focus on, and we're going to be zeroing in on a phrase of Galatians 4 verse 4, The question that I want to reflect on with you for a while as we think about this is could Jesus have been born at any other time in human history than the time in which he was born? Could he have come in the time of the Kingdom of Israel? Could God have waited until, say, the 1800s to bring him here? Of course, it wouldn't be the 1800s, but at least could he have waited many years to bring Christ to come? Now, theoretically, we can say, well, perhaps, yes. In fact, that might be one of the fun kind of questions we could have when we're sitting around drinking coffee, arguing theology, is to say, well, what would it be like if Jesus came today? How would that have happened? How would that have been received? Are the circumstances such that it could happen? But the basic answer is God had a divine plan, the triune God had a divine plan, and there was no other time in history that Jesus could have been born. And the phrase that we're gonna think about today is that first phrase of Galatians 4, for the NIV has this, when the time had fully come, God sent his son. Other translations, the one I'll probably use mostly, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. It was when the time was right, when the time was full, that God sent Jesus. Jesus didn't come early. He didn't come late. He came right on time. The sovereign God had a plan. And in God's sovereign providence, he is working that plan out. in history, and we're working it out in history according to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So what does that phrase mean, in the fullness of time God sent his son? Well, in the most basic sense, and the one we can certainly grab hold of with both hands is the fact that it means that God had, he came at the time pre-set by Almighty God. that he arrived on the scene of human history at a time fixed by the father. In the fullness of time, the father, God the father sent his son. It was at the right time that he was born in Bethlehem. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't just a happenstance. It was planned and projected and executed by Almighty God. God prepared Mary and Joseph to be there at that time for Mary to be the mother of the Messiah. God does all things good in his time. And this text affirms for us in no uncertain terms the sovereign providence of Almighty God in orchestrating, in this sense, all of history to bring it to the place where Jesus would be born, to the time when he would be born. And it gives us hope, and I hope to spend some time on that in a little bit, it gives us hope that he's doing the very same thing in our lives. Just as he orchestrated all of history to be the right time for Jesus to be born, God Almighty, the Sovereign One, is orchestrating your lives to be the right time for the things that occur. And it's interesting for us to keep in mind that same thing is going to be true for Jesus' return. We think it's taking a long time We're ready for Jesus to come back and usher us to glory. But Jesus' return, like his first coming, is going to be exactly when God has fixed that time. We get impatient. We lose hope. We have to remind ourselves of the character of our God. And very well-known and good commentator William Hendrickson focuses just on this particular point about it's just at the right time when God had fixed it. He says that Jesus came at the time previously fixed by the Father is about all we can say with absolute certainty about the phrase, the fullness of time. Other ideas, however, may have been included in the concept, for example, to mention but one, that of the ripeness of opportunity for the scattering far and wide of the seeds of the gospel. And that's in part what I want to do for the next little bit in this particular sermon is have you think about how was it that that was the fullness of time? The bedrock truth we have is that God sovereignly picked that time and that was why Jesus came. But how was it that God had prepared that day and that age to be the fullness of time for Jesus to come? And I offer this as hopefully an encouragement to you to see how God is providing. Remember when we went through Jonah, last year we were reminded that that fish that swallowed him, God had prepared decades, many decades before Jonah ever, maybe, probably before Jonah was ever born, God had prepared this fish that would one day swallow Jonah. How is it that God is preparing this to be the fullness of time? Well, there's three particular areas to note, the contributions of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews in terms of this time. There are many wonderful New Testament introductions, J. Gresham Machen being one, that help us to think about it. But how did God orchestrate all this and bring it together? Well, the contribution of the Greeks come to bear in a couple different ways. Remember the conquest of Alexander the Great, he died in 323 BC. In the conquest of Alexander the Great, one of the things that was accomplished through that is it unified the entire Mediterranean world at least under one language, the Greek language. There were other languages used for commerce and business, perhaps, and certainly all the local areas had their own dialects. In Israel at that time, they spoke a form of Hebrew called Aramaic. We get a glimpse of that in our New Testament, sometimes when the things that Jesus says are translated, like when he spoke to Jerusalem's daughter and said, Well, he was speaking in Aramaic, it's given to us directly, and then the writer translates it and says, well, that means child, get up. So the people that lived in Israel at that time had their own dialect, but the language that united the empire, the common language, what was referred to as common or koine Greek, was the Greek language. And so when Christian missionaries traveled, as you read that in the Book of Acts, when Christian missionaries traveled throughout the world, they could go into any community in what was then the Roman Empire and they could communicate with the people there. Because God's sovereign purpose had been to lay out the Greek language to unify the kingdom. And they could go into every community and preach and communicate and teach the Word, and interestingly, before the coming of Christ, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek. And so here the Christian missionaries, they didn't have books and Bibles like we do, but they could go in any community and they can open up their Greek Bible and speak to Greek listeners and tell them the truth about Jesus Christ from the Old Testament. And other contributions of the Greeks that kind of did form together the mindset that the gospel came into was Greek philosophy, Greek false gods and religion. It kind of communicated a mindset. The belief in it pushed people to think about the realities beyond just the physical world. But it had degenerated into a self-centered philosophy where you just live for pleasure or you're indifferent to the things of this world. And the philosophies and the religions of the ancient world were very unsatisfying. Another New Testament survey textbook talks about that. He says, generally superstition and syncretism characterized the masses so that Christianity entered a religiously and philosophically confused society. Men felt helpless under the fate of the stars. A mood of despair and at best pessimism prevailed. And into that arena, God brings the light of the gospel of the Son, Jesus Christ, to men who were confused and full of despair. You have the message of hope through Jesus Christ. In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. In the fullness of time, God is accomplishing His purposes in you. He uniquely prepared the world for the coming of his son and the proclamation of the gospel throughout the world. We see great contributions through the Romans, very interesting and significant contributions. There was a sense of unity in the Roman Empire at the time Jesus came. Now, you would say that unity was at the point of a spear, and to some extent that's correct. The various communities, the various civilizations that Rome had under its dominion brought together, there was a sense of commonality so that you could travel from one place to another. Another aspect of the contributions of the Romans was the era of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, which to a large extent was really true. The Roman army could reach any province of Rome within a week. In the presence of those armies, in the presence of that, the power of Rome established a semblance of peace throughout the Roman Empire so that Christian missionaries could travel and be somewhat protected. The Roman army, as part of the guardians of that Roman peace, were the guardians of that peace. And yes, there were abuses, no doubt, by the Roman army. But in a sense, what you have to see is that the Roman armies became the unwitting protectors of Christian missionaries who traveled the world, who traveled throughout the kingdom. In the fullness of time, God sent his son. It was a prime time for the missionaries to travel. And when soldiers came to know Christ, they became government-sponsored missionaries to the far corners of the world. As far north as the British Isles, what we now know as France and Germany. The Roman roads, perhaps the most significant contribution of the Romans, it was an elaborate system of roads that are used in many places even today. And while travel was hazardous then as it is in our own day, nevertheless, those roads became highways for the mission, the proclamation of the gospel, missionaries to travel around the world. And the laws that governed that kingdom, in a sense, guarded our missionaries. In the first century, the first part of the first century after Christ had died and rose again and ascended, Christians were considered a subset of Judaism. And Judaism had a semblance of acceptance within the laws of the Roman Empire. And so when Christian missionaries traveled, they were, in a sense, under the protection of the Roman laws. Now that changed under Nero. and subsequent emperors, but initially in the early years of the Christian preaching of the gospel, they were protected. God sovereignly and uniquely prepared the time to be the fullness of time for the spread of the gospel. And the last contribution just to think about for a minute is the contribution of the Jews. In 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel was devastated by the Assyrians, their capital city destroyed, and the people scattered throughout the world. 140 years later, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, not completely, but largely, the people were exiled or taken captive to Babylon. But then when the northern kingdom was destroyed, the Assyrians didn't want them to ever come back, and they sent them to the far corners of the world. Now, you might think, well, how in the world does that help anything? Well, it helps in several ways. One is you have the presence of Jews throughout the world. Now not everybody would have been happy about that, but at the same time you had the presence of those who believed the God of the Bible and taught the Old Testament Scriptures. So the knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures was throughout the Roman Empire. They taught the true God. There were many pagans who were attracted to that. There were two categories of pagans who came to believe in the God of the Jews. There were proselytes who they went through the whole process of becoming Jews. There were many, and you read about them in the scriptures. There were God-fearers. They remained pagans. They didn't become full Jews, but they worshiped with the Jews. They were attached themselves to the Jews, and they were God-fearers. So the knowledge of the true God was throughout the empire. There was the longing for the Messiah that was an expectation, but perhaps the significant contribution was the synagogue. Throughout the empire, throughout the world at that time, the Jews, wherever they went, if they had 10 men, they established a synagogue. In fact, the unique thing about Philippi, as we read about it in Acts, as we went through it in our letter, is when they went there, there was no synagogue. They met with the ladies who were studying the Bible by the river, and they met Lydia at that point. But in every city, they established a synagogue. And so that was a vehicle for Christian missionaries, you know, the record of acts. They would go into a town, their first step was to go to the synagogue, and they would preach the gospel. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. There's in a real sense was no better time in history for the extension of the Christian gospel throughout the world. For the timing of Christ to come and to bear our sins and to be born. When the time had fully come or in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. God in his sovereign providence, had prepared everything to be exactly the right time. And then, of course, obviously, it was exactly the right time that was fixed in his plans. for Jesus to come. So what are some of the implications of the truth of God's sovereign providence orchestrating events to accomplish his purpose? Well, there are a couple that I want to direct your thoughts to in terms of the implications of the truth. The one is it humbles us. It humbles man. Man wants to think that he's in control of all things. He says, I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. But he's not. God is. In Luke chapter 2, in that birth narrative, we have the account written for us that it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree by Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxation first took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed. Joseph also went to be registered or taxed to his own city. Now Caesar, he thinks he's doing what he wants to do. But the sovereign God is saying, I have Joseph and Mary that I need to get to Bethlehem. Caesar, decree that a tax should be taken. He thinks he's in control. It's God that's in control, orchestrating everything to accomplish his will. And the wicked, they oppose the workings of the Lord. The wicked oppose God's plan. Herod tries to kill God's son. And the sovereign God says, we'll have none of it. He has Joseph and Mary escape to Egypt with Jesus. But it's very humbling to you in our lives. We make our plans. We make great plans. I had great plans for this week. They didn't work out. And sad to say, I didn't respond too well when the plans didn't work out. We get a little frustrated, get a little angry, get a little disappointed. God has a plan. And sometimes when we don't even know what the plan, God has a plan. And it humbles us to realize how dependent we are on God. I'm not in control, God's in control. And he's working, it humbles us. But for the believer, it gives us hope. Because no matter what circumstances that we encounter, God has a plan. We, you and me, we feel trapped. How many times have we been in situations and we just felt totally trapped? I don't know how I'm going to get out of this. I don't know where this is going to go. The people in the first century were under distress. They were under the power of, they were under the thumb of the Roman authorities. They had longed for the coming of the Messiah for many, many, many centuries, and God hadn't spoken through a prophet for over 400 years till John came. And God was, in their views, silent. But the circumstances they were in were not gonna rule the outcome in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. The circumstances were not going to win. God was going to win. God's sovereign purposes were going to be accomplished, no matter what. And for you and I, as believers, we, even through our tears at times, have the hope that nothing will thwart God's good plan for you. Nothing. He orders history to accomplish his purposes. He orders events in your life to accomplish his purpose. And for the skeptic, this only fuels his hatred of God. He can't stand his weakness, and he can't stand not to be in control. But for the believer, it's an inexpressible comfort. We must not allow ourselves to think we are in the swamp of meaninglessness in our life. Nothing is meaningless in our lives. God is working his purpose out. He knows why, he knows when, and he will bring it to pass. There's a hymn in our hymnal, and sometimes we should sing it, but I don't want you to turn there, but let me read you just a couple stanzas of the hymn. It's God is Working His Purpose Out. When things look darkest for the people of that day, God sent forth his son. The hymn goes this way. The first stanza is God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. God is working his purpose out and the time is drawing near. Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that will surely be when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. Amen. We long for that. Then I'll skip down the fifth stanza. All we can do is nothing worth unless God blesses the deed. Vainly we hope for the harvest tide till God gives life to the seed. Yet, nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. May you rest in the care of your God, the Almighty, that in the fullness of time, he will accomplish his purposes in you. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much for the glory of your name. Thank you for the glory of your power. We thank you, Lord, that you demonstrated that so wonderfully and fully in the fullness of time that you sent forth your Son. We revel in that sovereignty and in that power, and also in what was accomplished through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Father, may you encourage us today to rest in hope in you, our God, that you are working your purpose out as year extends to year, and that we one day as collectively and individually as your people will see the glory of God filling the earth as the waters cover the sea. May you bring that glory in and through us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.