Wow, what a great song. Thank you Endeavor. Phillips, Dean, and Greg could take a little
bit of a lesson from you, I think, on that song. Well, would you please turn in your
Bible to Galatians chapter 3, where today we're going to begin reading in verse 26.
Galatians chapter 3 and verse 26. A few years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to
see the royal jewels, the crown jewels in England. Perhaps you have been there in the
Tower of London and you walk through this amazing maze of security until you come to
this room that is especially prepared for these beautiful jewels. You walk in and you
have the opportunity and amazement to see these jewels of the crown of England laid
upon pillows and cushions of velvet. It's absolutely overwhelming. In fact, there are
so many jewels there that you cannot concentrate on one of them or a few of them. Your mind
tries to take in all of it and it's overwhelming. I think of that when I think of this text
because it is the kind of a text that has many rubies and diamonds of truth. Trying
to take all of them in is almost impossible. Today we're going to try to focus on a particular
part of this text, but we need to see the whole thing.
I begin reading in verse 26 where it says, 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'm saying is that as long as an 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 forth his
son born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under 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.
I enjoy attending theater performances. I remember the first ones that I attended as
a small child. We went to our high school in a small town in Kansas. And as we sat in
the auditorium, we could look underneath the curtain. It didn't quite reach down to the
floor of the stage. And as we sat there in the audience, we could look underneath the
curtain and see the feet of actors and stage technicians as they were setting up the stage.
And then when everything was in place and you could see all the feet scurrying to the
side and maybe one person or two left on the main stage, the curtains would open and the
play would begin. What we have here in this text in the sentence we're going to look
at today is the stage being set. It says, when the time had fully come, God sent forth
his son. In other words, Providence was going to so manipulate the stage of history that
it would prepare for the greatest drama ever to take place on planet earth. That drama
was the entrance of God himself into human history for a particular purpose. History,
as you have heard many times probably, is really a combination of two words, simply
his story. And that's what it is. History is the fulfilling of the story of God for
the history of mankind. God's work in history prepared the world for the birth of Jesus
Christ and for you to receive your inheritance. On this first Sunday of Advent as we think
about hope and the anticipation of the coming of Christ, I want us to think about how God
was at work in history preparing for the birth of Jesus Christ and also for your receiving
of your inheritance. We're going to sum up what this text is saying today in one sentence,
or at least try to. The first part of this sentence, there are three parts to the sentence.
The first part is this. It all came together. It all came together. It says, but when the
fullness of time was come. Some of you may remember Hannibal of the A-Team fame. He was
well known for a statement that he made often, almost on every program. He said, I love it
when a plan comes together. You remember that? So does God. So does God. He had a plan that
came together. You see, God is the master arranger. He orchestrates the arrangement
of human history. By his providence, he oversees and super intends the choices that people
make so that in the end, his purpose is fully realized. God's providence, which we talked
about last week at some length, does not rule out human choice or responsibility. In fact,
God's providence takes all of that into account as it works through history to achieve God's
purpose.
How did God coordinate history for the birth of his Son? What does this mean when it says
that in the fullness of time, God sent his Son? Well, I believe that there are a number
of ways that could be answered, but let me try to answer it this morning by saying that
there were a number of ways in which God orchestrated the major cultural influences surrounding
Palestine so that a desired scenario was created. This required hundreds of years. We are people
of time. We measure things out in days and weeks and years. Not many of us measure out
time in centuries, however, because we usually don't live that long. But God is a God of
centuries. God is a God of ages. And over a period of several hundred years, God orchestrated
the cultural influences on that piece of real estate that we call Palestine so that there
came a point when everything was ready, when the stage was set, so that the curtains could
be drawn open and God's drama could unfold.
Let me mention to you first the influence of the Greeks. The cultural influence of the
Greeks is called Hellenization. It took place in that part of the world through the conquest
of Alexander the Great, who was the son of Philip of Macedon. Philip's son was a brilliant
general. He had the goal to conquer the world, and he set out to do it. And in 12 years,
it could be said that he did. He was able to push the borders and the influence of Greece
far beyond Palestine all the way to the border of India. As a result of his conquests and
the continuing influence of his empire, even after he died at 33 years of age, there was
an influence that invaded Palestine and remained there, which caused the fullness of the time
to be brought to pass.
Today we think of the influence of America across the world, and it might be said that
there is an Americanization of the world. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just
saying it's a reality, the Americanization of the world. Because wherever you go, the
influence of our culture reaches there. It was that same way in that day with Greece.
And even though Alexander died and his empire was divided up among his four generals, there
was a significant contribution that was left behind that influenced Palestine 350 years
later when Jesus was born.
The primary one, perhaps, is the language, the Greek language. The Greek language of
that era was what English is today. It was the language of commerce. It was the language
of the common people. People who lived in various regions spoke their own language or
dialect, but they all spoke Greek because that was how they communicated together. Greek
is an expressive language. And because of that, there was easy communication in the
day that Jesus was born. And the communication was in a language that was very expressive.
The influence of the Greek language was so significant that in 280 BC, the Hebrew Old
Testament, which had existed in Hebrew for hundreds of years, that Hebrew Old Testament
was translated into Greek in what we call the Septuagint. It was that version of the
Old Testament, the Septuagint, that the apostles used and referenced in their preaching.
When Paul and the other authors of the New Testament wrote the words of the New Testament,
they wrote in Greek, not in Aramaic, but in Greek, not in Hebrew, but in Greek, because
that was the language that would quickly get the message as far as possible. So in one
sense it was the fullness of times because of the influence of Greece upon Palestine.
But there's also the influence of Rome. Greece fell apart, and as a result of that, the Romans
became more powerful. Starting from the small city-state almost of Roma, they began to push
out with their military muscle until they had conquered all of what we call today Italy,
and then beyond that into Europe and Northern Africa, and then to the east across the Middle
East, including Palestine. And so that in the first century BC, there was a very powerful
force that was occupying Palestine that was Roman. So what difference does that make?
Wherever the Romans went, they did a couple of things. First of all, they enforced what
they called Pax Romana, which means a Roman peace. They enforced peace by the sword. They
said, we are in charge and you will be at peace. We will not allow rebellions. And so
very oppressively they created a peaceful situation in that part of the world so that
these city-states were no longer at war with one another and there was constant turmoil.
Rather, there was somewhat a universal peace that existed. Again, that was very important
for the setting of the birth of the Savior so that the message could be disseminated
rapidly around the world. The Romans also were famous for their road systems. Throughout
their empire, they built roads for transportation and commerce. Some of those roads are still
visible today. I don't know that they are traveled on today, but there are some of them
that are used for walking paths. And still today you can see in those Roman roads, which
were ingeniously engineered, you can see the tracks of chariots that used to travel those
roads. Again, the roads provided for rapid dissemination of the Gospel, for people to
travel and to tell the good news. And so there is that Roman peace of the fullness of times,
but there's another peace, a very significant one of course, and one that you would be familiar
with, and that's the Jewish peace. The Jews had brought the law, this revelation of God,
this Old Testament as we call it, this expression of who God is and the promises that he had
made for his people, his covenant with his people, and the promise of a Redeemer who would
come. The Jews brought that. They also brought the bloodline of the Messiah himself. From
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, you trace it on down through David and so forth, all the
way to Jesus. That came through the Jews. There was also in that day a yearning for
the coming of a Deliverer. In this particular time, in this window of history, the Jews
were crying out to God and looking for a Messiah. There was a fever pitch, anticipation for
the coming of Messiah, although when he came as he did, most of them failed to recognize
him. All of this was part of the Jewish contribution. And then let me just mention quickly the synagogues
that were established by the Jews after they were dispersed to the Babylonian captivity.
They had always worshiped in Jerusalem at the temple, and yet once they were dispersed,
they created these synagogues in cities where they lived, where they would gather for worship.
And the synagogues became then a primary place where the apostles would go first to declare
the Gospel to the people of that city. They also became a model for the church and how
the church meets. And so the point I'm making here is that God went to great trouble to
see that all of the cultural influences had taken place to prepare for the birth of his
son, so that it was when the fullness of the time had come, all of these influences had
done their part that God sent his son. And so we say it all came together with the miracle
of Christmas. And we see here the miracle of Christmas is simply in these phrases. God
sent his son born of a woman, born under the law. In these cryptic phrases we observe truths
about Jesus Christ. We find here the miracle of Christmas without all of the narrative
of the shepherds and the angels and so forth. It's all boiled down to what really happened
in the miracle of Christmas. There are two observations that I want to make. In the Gospels
you will read the what of Christmas, but here you read, or rather the how of Christmas,
but here you read the what. What really took place. Two observations. First of all, we
see that there are two natures that are joined in the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of
the incarnation. Notice that Paul says God sent his son. And so Jesus is God's son. That
means that he is subordinate to the Father for carrying out the purposes of God. It does
not mean that God created him, that God looked down upon the man Jesus at some point in his
life and said, I'm going to make you my son. It does not mean that. He was the son of God
before he was born. Eternally he is God the son. This gets into the miracle of the triunity
of God that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And what we see in the statement here is that
God the Father sent his son, the second person as we say it, of the Trinity. God sent him.
God sent his son. And God sent him in a particular way. He was born. He might have just appeared.
In fact he did appear in the Old Testament before he was born. He is called the angel
of the Lord, but it was really the son of God making an appearance on the earth in the
form of a human. But here a special event takes place. God the son is born of a woman.
That is, he entered our race. He didn't merely appear to us. He became one of us. He entered
the world as a son of Adam, and yet did that without inheriting the sin of Adam. He was
virgin born. And God so shielded him in his conception that he was untainted by Mary's
sin. So that the angel announcing his birth called him that Holy One. There has never
been anyone like Jesus born before this. And no one can ever be born like this again. He
is absolutely unique. Two natures, the nature of God, the nature of humanity, united in
one person. It took the followers of Jesus some time to sort through this and to really
understand it. It became necessary to do so because in those centuries following Jesus'
coming there were false teachers who arose and began to say things about Jesus that were
not true. And so the church in order to articulate carefully what the Bible was saying about
Jesus and what happened formulated statements or creeds. On the screen before you is one
that is called the Athanasian Creed. It was a very significant statement of the church
made in the 300s AD. In this statement there is an orthodox declaration regarding who Jesus
is. I want you to notice how they said it 1600 years ago. Follow along on the screen.
Furthermore, so I'm picking this up in the middle of the statement, furthermore it is
necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believed, that is that the Christian
convert believed, rightly, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith
is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is what? God
and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds, a man of substance
of his mother, born in the world, perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul
and human flesh subsisting, equal to the Father as touching his Godhead and inferior to the
Father as touching his manhood, who although he is God and man, yet he isn't two but one
Christ, one not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood
into God, one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person, for
as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ. Now there's
far more than we can talk about in this screen. Every sentence is packed with lots of meaning.
The reason that I put it on the screen this morning is because 1,600 years ago the church
understood that it is absolutely essential for one who is a Christian to confess the
truth about the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is both God and man. And if one denies that,
he is not a Christian. He is not a follower of Jesus Christ. And it all goes back to passages
like this one in Galatians chapter 4. The church understood what this text was saying,
as you do this morning. It is that God sent his son born of a woman. He is one man who
is both God and man in his natures. Now there's a second observation we want to make based
upon our text, and that is that the law of Moses tested his righteousness, and it found
him perfectly obedient. You see, Jesus was born under the law. He was subject to what
he himself had declared as God. To put it in the simplest of terms, he himself gave
the Ten Commandments, as well as all of the regulations and requirements of righteousness
in the Old Testament. He had given it. He was the author of the law. But when he was
born he subjected himself to the law. He was born under the law so that that law could
test him. So that it could determine if in fact he was truly righteous. And throughout
the 33 or so years of his life it found him perfect in its sight. And you say, well, so
what? What difference does that make? All the difference. You see, the law had never
failed to find sin in one who was subject to it in the history of the human race. The
law always found sin in a person, because persons, people are sinners. It always found
it. And when the law found sin, it condemned us. That was God's plan. But when the law
turned its spotlight on Jesus, it was unable to find a single blemish in his character.
He perfectly obeyed every requirement of the law, in deed and in spirit. And as a result
of that, the law passed him and declared him righteous. First time in history. It had never
happened before. It can never happen again.
This morning the choir sang a beautiful arrangement of songs from next week's musical. And one
of the songs referred to was an ancient hymn. How many of you like old hymns? Oh, that's
a lot of us here this morning. Well, let me give you an old hymn. It was written 1600
years ago. It is a hymn that was written by a man by the name of Aurelius Prudentius.
You've heard of him, of course. Aurelius was a lawyer and a judge. And of course, in the
300s, he was born in 348, died in about 413 A.D. He wrote in Latin, and so these words
are translated into the English and rhymed for us. But listen to what this man, who was
a lawyer and a judge, listen to what he said regarding Jesus Christ and the miracle of
Christmas.
This is the first verse that we heard sung this morning. Of the Father's love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be. He is Alpha and Omega. He the source, the ending he. Of the
things that are, that have been, and that future year shall see evermore and evermore.
At his word the worlds were framed. He commanded it was done. Heaven and earth and depths of
ocean in their threefold order won. All that grows beneath the shining of the moon and
the burning sun evermore and evermore.
He is found in human fashion. Here's the miracle of Christmas now. He is found in human fashion.
Death and sorrow here to know that the race of Adam's children, doomed by law to endless
woe may not henceforth die and perish in the dreadful gulf below evermore and evermore.
O that birth forever blessed when the virgin full of grace by the Holy Ghost conceiving
bare the savior of our race and the babe, the worlds redeemer first revealed his sacred
face evermore and evermore.
Then Aurelius writes, this is he whom seers and sages sang of old with one accord, whom
the writings of the prophets promised in their faithful word. Now he shines the long expected.
Let creation praise its Lord evermore and evermore.
Lots of additional verses to that beautiful hymn that the church has sung for 1600 years
expressing the miracle of Christmas. It all came together with the miracle of Christmas
for the greatest of purposes. The greatest of purposes. Why this miracle of Christmas?
Let me tell you why. It is so that God could give his greatest gift, which is righteousness,
from a relationship with him that brings you life.
Now there are two actions involved in this gift. Two things that he would do. He says
here he was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law. To redeem.
As I said earlier, to redeem means to purchase or to buy up. It means to recover something
from the power of another. And so here we see that sin had held you and me as slave
prisoners. And it used the law of Moses as its legal authority to do so, condemning us,
keeping us in our cells, condemned to death. But God rescued us from that slavery. God
came himself into the world, and he himself took the law's curse for us. That's how he
did it. Look back in chapter 3 for just a moment, and notice that Paul here refers to
the law. He says all who rely on observing the law, verse 10 of Galatians 3, are under
a curse. Do you know how many people today are relying on their own works, their own
performance to get them to heaven? They're trying to be good enough for God, which is
another way of saying they're relying on the law, observing the law. And it says here they're
under a curse, for it's written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything,
written in the book of law. Or as we're told elsewhere in the New Testament, if we keep
the whole law, all 430-some commands, but we break one point, the whole thing comes
down on us. We're guilty. We're not good enough. Clearly no one is justified before God by
the law, because the righteous will live by faith. And then verse 13 it says, Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is
everyone who is hung on a tree. You and I are in the prison cell of our sin, and the
law has pronounced its sentence upon us. It has found us sinful, and we've broken God's
law and we're guilty. And it pronounces the curse upon us of death and separation from
God. And it holds us there. And were it not, my friend, for a redeemer, a rescuer who came
and who said, I'm going to take that curse upon me so that this prisoner can go free,
we would be hopeless. But that's exactly what Jesus did. That's why the miracle of Christmas,
he came as one of us, was found absolutely perfect, so that then he could take upon himself
the curse of the law as a voluntary act. And having satisfied the law, then we can be set
free. That's redemption. That's the gift that God has for us. But there's another part to
it. It goes on to say that we might receive the adoption of sons or the full rights of
sons. Not only did God set us free from the slavery of our sin, and remove us from that
cell in which we were held prisoner, but God has brought us into his own family. It's not
just that we're released slaves, we are now sons of God, the children of God, with all
of the rights that belong to one who is an heir of God himself. What an amazing thing
this is. The greatest possible purpose. And God orchestrated it all. You see, it all came
together. All of this preparation through the centuries before the birth of Christ.
It all came together to that one moment when he was born. The miracle of Christmas. It
all came together for that miracle for the greatest of purposes that God might release
us from our slavery to sin, the condemnation, the curse that we bore, and set us free to
be his children and his heirs. What an amazing gift. And here's what it means. It means that
Christmas is the celebration of God's work in history. I would say to you that most of
the people who live around us today are totally unaware of this. They think of Christmas as
some legend or some myth that religious people believe. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Christmas is the celebration of God's work in history so that you and I could receive
his free gift. His free gift, which is righteousness. Righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus
Christ. A free gift. In a few weeks you will be beside a Christmas
tree somewhere probably, and underneath that tree there are going to be lots of gifts.
And you'll begin opening them one at a time or maybe ten at a time. I don't know how you
do it in your family. When I was a kid we just opened all of them at once. And we have
developed a different tradition in our family so that everybody opens one gift at a time.
It takes hours. But it's wonderful. It's wonderful because then you get to enjoy each of the
gifts really. But you know what? We've had 35, this will be our 35th Christmas as a family.
I don't remember one time we left a gift under the tree. At least one of mine. No, I don't
remember that. We open every gift. Can you imagine? Can you imagine anybody leaving God's
gift under the tree? This gift of righteousness, being right with God, having a relationship
with God, and it's left there under the tree unopened, unused. That's almost unthinkable.
We wouldn't leave a gift from a brother or sister or parent unopened. And yet here is
God's gift for which he paid the price of the life of his own son left unopened before
many people. And if that's you my friend, you don't have to wait until December 25th
to open the present. It's been waiting on you all your life. All you have to do is believe
on Jesus Christ and receive him as your Lord and Savior. And that gift will be opened and
given to you, and you will be released from that prison of sin and that slavery and that
curse that goes with it. And set free from that prison to walk openly and freely before
God and to be his own child and someday the heir of everything along with Jesus Christ.
That's what's coming for you when you open the gift. And if you've not opened it, I hope
you would this morning. And if you have opened it, folks, the greatest thrill we can have
this Christmas season is to point out that gift to other people. To let them know that
the gift is there for them too. And that they can open that gift and know God. And they
don't have to try to be good enough anymore because they get righteousness from Jesus
himself. The only kind that will really get you to heaven.
Let's be busy this season sharing about that gift. Inviting people to come. Being a part
of the musical on the 17th. But inviting them to open that gift and experience God for themselves.
Let's pray together. Father, it is my prayer that in this season
of hope, the season when we remember with such joy and sentiment of our hearts the coming
of Jesus, it is my prayer that we will more than ever in our lives grasp what it's all
about. And I pray that when we do, our hearts will be motivated, afresh, and stimulated
so that others around us will also hear about it from our lips.
Thank you for the gift. And my friend, if you're sitting there and you've never opened
that gift, you can do it right now, will you? Will you believe on Jesus? Will you ask him
to come to your prison cell? To come and take the guilt off of your life? To release you
from the chains and the curse? To set you free and to make you his son, his child? He'll
do that. It's a gift waiting to be opened by you. Amen.