I look forward to more of that this evening at 6 o'clock in Bethlehem. Over the course of 25 years in ministry, I have gathered little gifts and objects that people have given me through the years. One is always grateful for gifts that are given, but it is those gifts that are made by hand that are especially appreciated. I don't have the ability to do that sort of thing. Some of you are able to do needlework or woodworking, other kinds of crafts.
Some of you can cook very well, and I've appreciated those gifts from time to time, and others have. When we take time to put ourselves into a gift, when we take time to prepare it personally and carefully, it means so much more. That's the kind of a gift that God gave us. When God gives, He gives the very best. Long ages ago, He promised the gift that the race of Adam most needed, a Savior who would destroy the serpent
and rescue the descendants of Adam and Eve. Through the centuries, He sent periodic reminders of His promise, and through the prophets, delivered information so that we would be sure to recognize that gift when He came. We were told beforehand about His character. We knew in advance what His works would be. We even were given information as to where He would be born in the city of David, Bethlehem. And we were given information about the circumstances surrounding His coming.
And then it was time for the gift itself. I invite you to open your Bible to Galatians chapter 4, as we see the Apostle Paul's commentary on what I'm describing. Where in verse 4 he says, but when the time had fully come. Notice that phrase, but when the time had fully come, God sent His Son. This fullness of time that is described by the Apostle in Galatians 4 verse 4 refers to a completion of a period of time that was ordered beforehand and appointed.
In other words, there was a period of time in which God ordained certain things to take place, and when those things had been done, God sent His Son. So we can say that God was at work in the world events to prepare for the arrival of His special gift, Jesus Christ. This morning I'd like for us to explore that thought a bit. What does this mean, the fullness of time? How did God prepare for the arrival of His gift? Well, in the first place we can say that God prepared the time politically.
And if you remember but one word, you'll understand essentially how He prepared it politically, and that is the word Rome. Rome as a city was founded in 753 B.C. near the Tiber River, 17 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea. But it was nearly 600 years before that city-state began to form an empire, which became known as the Roman Empire. That was in 146 B.C.
Its power spread to the western Mediterranean area, and then in 64 B.C. its power spread eastward under Pompeii, and finally encompassed Palestine. Then in 31 B.C., Octavian became the sole ruler and was named Augustus, and the Roman Empire came to its full. Augustus Caesar ruled from 31 A.B.C. until 14 A.D.
It is to his reign that Luke ties the birth of Jesus Christ, for he says it was during the reign of Augustus Caesar that there was sent out a decree that all of the world should be taxed, a census should be taken. Luke 2, verse 1. God prepared the time politically by the rise of Rome as a world power. God had predicted this through Daniel, both in the second and the seventh chapter of Daniel. That prophet is given information about a succession of world empires. The fourth of them would be Rome.
Rome's contribution to the fullness of time includes two important things. First of all, there is the peace that Rome brought to the world. Until Rome ruled, there were many different empires and countries and tribes and peoples who fought among themselves, especially in the Middle East. But Rome brought what was called a Pax Romana, the Roman peace. With their legions of soldiers, they marched over these other countries and peoples and tribes and subdued them.
And with those legions, they enforced a peace in that part of the world. This peace was very important for the arrival and then the dissemination of the message of the gift of God. But tied together with the Roman peace were the Roman roads. They were amazing engineers. And some of the stone roads that they built in those days are still being used today in parts of Asia Minor. Some of the roads are still today deeply rotted with chariot tracks.
If you can imagine driving a chariot over one of these roads and getting into the ruts, you can imagine what a challenge it must have been for those horse-pulled wagons to be able to navigate the Roman roads. And yet the roads were marvelous. They were the interstates of their day. They allowed for commerce and transportation. And again for the speedy dissemination of the gospel.
Both the Roman peace and the Roman road allowed for the gospel of Jesus Christ to spread rapidly throughout the known world, so that within a relatively brief period of time the entire empire had heard of the gospel of Jesus Christ. John MacArthur summarizes it this way. Rome instituted the Pax Romana, Roman peace, which provided economic and political stability.
The apostles and other early preachers and teachers could travel freely and safely throughout the empire and could do so on the magnificent system of roads built by the Romans. And so when it says that God waited until the fullness of time before he sent his son, it means that God allowed Rome to rise as a power over hundreds of years to bring about a military peace and to establish a road system that was unparalleled in its day. That was part of the fullness of time.
Secondly, we think of Greece and the fact that God prepared the time culturally. The Greek Empire actually preceded the Roman Empire. Alexander the Great in the third century B.C. conquered the known world in a few years. He spread the Greek culture and Greek language from the Greek peninsula all the way over into India, encompassing all of what is now called Iraq and Iran, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, and over into India.
All of that was under the control of Alexander the Great by the time he was 33 years of age. He wept because there was nothing more for him to conquer. Alexander was not a Christian. He was not a believer in the true God, and yet God raised him up. Indeed, Daniel also prophesied of him in the seventh chapter, where he foresees a beast like a leopard with four wings, describing the swiftness with which this empire would reach out and conquer its enemies.
That's exactly what Alexander did by his military genius. And as he did this, he spread what was called Hellenism. Hellenism applies to that period in history of civilization when Greek culture extended over the world. The chief characteristics of this Hellenism were great unity and close identity of interests in many fields.
Many independent small states and cities had been incorporated into larger states or units, such as Egypt, Syria, Macedonia, and later on the Roman Empire with Rome as its center. A strong sense of cosmopolitanism developed. Trade and traffic assumed unprecedented dimensions. An extremely important factor in the growth of unity was the universal use of the Koine form of Greek, the language of economic, scientific, and official exchanges.
That's from the Encyclopedia of the Bible published by Prentice Hall. You see, the Greek influence, this Hellenistic influence, brought a couple of important things. First, it brought the Greek culture itself, and accompanying that was the Greek language, which became widely used. Though there were many different languages and dialects throughout that region of the world, it unified the people by its culture and by the use of the Koine Greek language.
That Koine Greek is the Greek of the New Testament. It is fairly significantly different than modern-day Greek, although someone from Greece is able to pick up a New Testament and have some understanding of what it says. But the Koine Greek in that day was the popular language. It was the trade language. Everyone, including the Jews, who spoke Hebrew naturally, spoke Greek because of the influence of Alexander the Great and the Greek Empire. You say, well, what difference does all of this make?
Well, it makes a good deal of difference in that the New Testament being written in the Greek language was understood by everyone. Furthermore, as the people preached in the Greek language, they could speak to people from all different countries because nearly everyone had an understanding of Koine Greek.
Again, I'm quoting as a summary John MacArthur's statement, and Christians who propagated the gospel during the first several centuries had a common language with those to whom they witnessed and with whom they worshiped. Alexander the Great had thoroughly established Greek culture and language throughout the known world, and these continued their dominating influence long after Rome succeeded Greece as world ruler.
Now, by the time of Jesus' birth, the Hellenistic Roman culture was disintegrating badly, morally at least, so much so that even the pagans of that day were denouncing society because of its low morals. All of that produced a spiritual vacuum and hunger in the hearts of people as well. So when we talk about the fullness of time coming and then God sending His Son, we have to realize there's this Greek influence too.
God raised up the Greek empire in part so that its culture would unify the peoples, its language would unify them, and prepare them spiritually for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So He prepared the time culturally through Greece. I've touched upon the fact that there was a spiritual vacuum. That brings us to the third idea that is found in this statement when the fullness of time had come, and that is that God prepared the time spiritually.
But if when we think of politics, we think of Rome, and culture we think of Greece, when we think of God's spiritual preparation, we should think of the Jews. Well, there are two things that the Jews brought to that period of time that were very important to the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the New Testament Church. One was the creation of the synagogue. The word synagogue means together, together.
It's used in a variety of ways, even in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, called the Septuagint. But the primary way I'm thinking of the synagogue now is the way that we think of it today, a meeting place for the Jewish people to practice their faith. You see, when they were carried as exiles into Babylon, they no longer had a priesthood. There was no longer a temple with its sacrifices in Jerusalem. They could no longer make pilgrimages to the city of Jerusalem.
How were they to carry out their faith? How were they going to preserve the Torah, the books of Moses? Well, the answer is that they developed Torah studies, similar to our Bible studies. And they would gather in small groups to study the Torah, but this became more sophisticated and more organized as time passed, until they developed official synagogues or meeting places where they would study the Torah. Eventually, synagogues became schools and courts, as well as places of worship.
The synagogues became points that bridged into the Gentile culture, because as the Jews worshiped together, there were some Gentiles attracted, who became Jewish proselytes. The New Testament talks about such people. And so the synagogue became an important preparation point for the coming of Christ. You see, now, in what way would that be? Well, I think we probably don't realize how much what happened in the synagogue in that day relates to what we're doing this morning.
In the synagogue, there came to be a fixed liturgy, in which there was what was called the Shema, which was a declaration of their faith, something like the apostolic creed for Christians, that some churches use very formally. There was the Shemona Esre, which was a pronunciation of 18 benedictions upon the people who were gathered. And then there were the priest's blessings that were pronounced.
Once that was done, they then had an instructional part of the service, when someone would open the Torah to a text, would read it, and then would make comments about it. In the course of time, other prayers and songs were added, so that the liturgy developed fine distinctions according to the synagogue year.
Now, if you stop to think about it, we have prayers, and we have singing of songs, and we have the reading of the Torah, and we have someone standing up to talk about it, you can see the elements of Christian worship coming together in the synagogue. Now, in order for the Christian faith to spread, it had to go beyond Temple, it had to go beyond Jerusalem, and so God in His wisdom allowed for that to be set aside.
And for the development of synagogues that were still meeting in the days of Jesus, even though by that time there was a worship that had been reinstituted in Jerusalem. Jesus worshiped at the synagogue in Nazareth. You may recall, He came one day as a guest, and as the custom was, was invited to open the Torah and to read it, which He did. And then He sat down to teach them, which was the custom. Everybody else stood up.
Sometimes I think that would be a good idea for me to sit and everybody else here to stand. It would help sleeping in church. And as He began to explain His thoughts about that, they became very agitated, you remember, and were going to drive Him over the hill because they considered Him to have committed blasphemy.
He also worshiped at a synagogue in Capernaum. Those of us who are going on the tour to Israel in a couple of months will stand on that spot in Capernaum, where there is a synagogue that has been uncovered by archaeologists. Not the one Jesus was in, but a second century synagogue built most likely upon the very same foundation as that synagogue that Jesus worshiped in, in Capernaum.
So synagogue worship became a very central part of the Jewish faith, and what became the New Testament church developed right out of that. They used that form. But undoubtedly the most important contribution of the Jews was the Law of Moses, which they had received and which they preserved. In fact, here in the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul talks about the purpose of the Law.
He says, for example, in chapter 3, verse 23, Before this faith came, this faith in Jesus Christ, we were held prisoners by the Law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the Law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. And so he explains there that God gave the Law to prepare us spiritually for the coming of the Christ. We became prisoners of the Law in the sense that it demanded righteousness of us, which we could not, because of our sin, fulfill.
Its curse then came upon us. We became prisoners to it because of our sin. Not that the Law was bad, we were bad. And that was God's plan. He gave the Law not so that people could keep it and become righteous, but so that we could all see how unrighteous we are and how in need of a Savior we are. And so you see, the Law, which came through the Jewish people, was part of the fullness of time as well. It was part of God's preparation, His spiritual preparation, for the coming of His Son.
John Stott says, At the same time the old mythological gods of Greece and Rome were losing their hold on the common people, so that the hearts and minds of men everywhere were hungry for a religion that was real and satisfying. His point is that as the Law was being proclaimed, at the same time there was a diminishing of the traditional pagan religions of Greece and Rome, so that once again there was a spiritual thirst and hunger, a search for reality.
That was the fullness of time when God sent His Son. I want to get on to a fourth way in which God prepared the time. He prepared it personally. You notice that it says, When the fullness of time had come, or when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman. Now we have already studied for two weeks the necessity of that, and I hope have some understanding of it.
What I want to point out this morning is how God not only prepared for the coming of His Son by the contributions of the Roman Empire with their peace and their road system, and Greece through its unifying culture and language, and the Jews by the synagogue of worship and the Law they proclaimed, but there were some steps that God took to personally prepare for the coming of His Son. These had to be carried out.
For example, in the book of Isaiah, He prophesied the coming of one who would be the forerunner of the Lord, who would appear in the Judean wilderness and would cry out for the people of God to turn to Him. Malachi joins in with that, and he says that before the Lord comes, Elijah will come to prepare the people spiritually. Now some of you know that both of those prophecies were fulfilled in John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is the one that Isaiah foresaw who stood in the wilderness preaching, proclaiming repentance, commanding the people to repent and be baptized as indication of the repentance. He is the one who came in the spirit and the power of Elijah. He wasn't Elijah himself personally, I think, that that coming of Elijah personally will precede the second coming of Jesus Christ.
I believe that he will be one of the two prophets who will appear in Jerusalem and will prophesy as predicted in the book of Revelation. But John the Baptist had about him that spirit of Elijah, according to the New Testament, and was a fulfillment of what Malachi had prophesied. Now I'd like you to turn to the Gospel of Luke for a moment and notice how God went about the preparation for the coming of John the Baptist.
Some of you already know that his father's name was Zechariah, his mother's name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth just happened to be a relative of a maiden named Mary who lived in Nazareth. Zechariah was a priest and it just so happened that on a certain day his opportunity came to serve in the temple. This was something that happened probably once in the lifetime of a priest to have this privilege to go into the temple and do this particular work.
And of course God is behind the scenes preparing all of this. And there he is given an announcement by an angel whose name is Gabriel. Verse 19 of Luke 1, I am Gabriel, the angel answered. I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not be able to speak until the day this happens. What he's talking about is the news he had just given to Zechariah that he would be given a boy, a baby.
He and Elizabeth were barren. They were infertile. They had no children. God said you're going to have a son. I want you to name him John. And Zechariah did not believe that and so his speech was taken away until the day came that the boy was born. So God was working you see to prepare for the coming of the Messiah in a personal way. He sent an angel to Zechariah to announce the birth of John the Baptist who had to come first.
Now after Elizabeth had been pregnant for six months, Gabriel was sent again by God to make another personal announcement. This time he goes to the city of Nazareth, a town in Galilee, verse 26, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Of course she was troubled by this and wondered what this was all about.
And the angel said, Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. And so a very similar announcement to the one six months before. You are going to have a baby, a son, and here is what you are to name him. Except this time the name is Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high.
The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. And Mary asked the obvious question, How can this be? I am a virgin. How can I have a child? The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.
Notice that the Holy One who is to be born. Remember I said last week that Jesus did not have a human father so that he would not be contaminated by Adam's sin passed down through the male seed. And now Mary is told that she will bear a son and he will be holy without sin. Now this does present another question. How was Jesus protected from Mary's sin? How did he not inherit her sin? As I mentioned last week, the Roman Catholic Church answers that by backing up the problem one generation.
They say that Mary was born without sin. In the little town where I grew up in Kansas we had a Catholic church. It was called the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Once I got old enough to pronounce it and then to understand what the words meant I thought it was talking about the conception of Jesus. The Immaculate, the sinless conception. But it's not. It's talking about Mary's conception.
The name refers to the fact that she was immaculately conceived without sin according to their teaching. But you still run into the same problem, don't you? How then was Mary born without sin? It seems to me that the Bible has a much clearer answer about that. The part that is very clear is that Mary was a sinner. She was not immaculately conceived at all. In fact, she speaks of God her Savior here in verse 47. My soul rejoices in God my Savior. She was not sinless. She needed a Savior.
She herself acknowledges that. Now the part that is still mysterious to us is how was it that Jesus was protected from Mary's sin? The answer to that is locked up in this somewhat poetic phrase where it says, the power of the Most High will overshadow you. There in that word overshadow there seems to be some way in which God protected the seed that Mary produced in her womb from her sin.
So that when the Holy Spirit caused that seed to be fully human without male participation, that fetus, that baby was conceived wholly sinless, completely without sin, even protected from Mary's sin being passed on to him. Mary rejoices in this though she does not fully understand it. The angels bottom line explanation is, verse 37, nothing is impossible with God. She says, I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said.
And so she accepted the assignment from God without fully understanding what it was all about yet, but submitting herself to the plan of her Lord. Even though Mary was a sinner, she was a godly young woman, the kind of a young woman that any of us would want to exemplify. She was pure. She was submissive to what the Lord wanted her to do in life. It goes on to record in Luke how Mary went to visit Elizabeth, her relative.
And even as Mary entered the room, she is now with child, even as she entered the room where Elizabeth is, John, within Elizabeth, jumps. He recognizes in utero, within the womb, the presence of this Holy One that is within Mary. And then she gives a beautiful statement, a song, in which she glorifies God for the role that she is filling and for His plan for them. And Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then it says, returned home.
And then it records the birth of John the Baptist and how he is named. And actually that's the first thing that Zachariah is able to say is what his name is to be. Remember now, he's not been able to speak for nine months. And they're about to name the boy at the time that he is dedicated and circumcised. And they're going to name him Zachariah, like the father. He says, no, call him John. First thing he said in nine months, because that's what the angel wanted him called.
And then Zachariah begins to speak, beautiful poetic language. The Luke records for us beginning in verse 67, and he says regarding his son John, look at verse 76 just to summarize it, and you, my child, will be called a prophet of the most high, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him. Zachariah understood the role that his son was to play, even as Mary now had the news. And so did Joseph by this time of what their role was in the fullness of time.
Now maybe the explanation we've given this morning helps all of us understand a little bit more. When we see this amazing phrase back in Galatians chapter 4, but when the time had fully come, why is it that God so carefully prepared for the arrival of this gift, Jesus Christ? Well, first it was because of the wonder of the gift itself. The wonder of the gift. Notice what it says here exactly in verse 4, God sent his son, born of a woman. In those two phrases we see the wonder of it.
First of all, this child is God's son. There is his deity. But he is also born of a woman. There's his humanity. He had to be both. He is not part deity and part humanity. He is full deity and full humanity. Undiminished deity, uncompromised humanity in one person. That's the wonder of the gift. He had to be God in order to possess the power to be our Savior. But he also had to be man in order to fill the position as our substitute on the cross. The wonder of the gift.
You see, there's never been a gift like this in the history of the world. It's totally unique. It can never happen again. When God became man. But God also prepared for the arrival of the gift for a second reason. And that is the wonder of the gift's purpose. Because his purpose was to be born under the law, like us, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons.
God wonderfully prepared for the coming of this gift because of the wonder of the gift itself and the wonder of what that gift would mean to us. It would mean for us that we would be purchased from our slavery to sin. That the price that the law demanded, death for sinners, might be paid and we might be let out free from that slavery. And then, not only that, but we might also be placed as sons in the family of God.
The Jews, the Romans, the Greeks, all had a coming of age ceremony for their boys. It occurred at different ages and different things happened. But there was a clear delineation in those days between childhood and adulthood. Today that delineation is sort of lost and I think it's kind of too bad, don't you? Children become adults way too young in our world. At least the knowledge they have comes way too young.
In those days there was childhood up to a point and from that point on a clear delineation, the person was considered an adult with all of the privileges and the rights that go with being an adult. What it's saying here is that God not only rescued us from the law's condemnation, but He gave to us the rights to be His full-grown adult children. All of the privileges that belong to God's children belong to each one of us in Christ. Oh, what a wonderful gift God gave us.
A gift He carefully prepared. Now just a word in closing to apply to our lives. Do you notice how God prepared through history for the coming of His Son? Can you trust a God who can orchestrate history to be wise enough to know what He's composing in your life? Don't you think a God who can orchestrate the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the influence of the Jews, and bring that all to a focal point in the arrival of His Son Jesus Christ can compose beautiful music in your life?
Sometimes when we hear the individual notes pounded out in the circumstances we're in, we say, wow, is that off-key? How could that ever fit in? That doesn't make any sense. That sounds terrible. But all the time God is at work in that composition of your life. And someday when He puts it all together, it's going to be a beautiful orchestration of a tune that's just you. Just you. It'll be your song. And it'll be the song that through the ages will be played to the glory and praise of God.
And so wherever this message of preparation catches you today, understand that you too are in preparation as a child of God. And you may not be able to hear the full orchestra playing. You may be hearing one note just pounded out monotonously right now, and it's getting a little old, but can't you trust God, the great orchestrator? Can't you trust Him to put the music together in your life in a way that's going to honor Him and ultimately be pleasing to you? I think you can.
So this morning I want to call upon you to trust. Just to relax. To not be so agitated and concerned and anxious. But to say, Lord, if you can prepare for the coming of your Son in such an amazing way, I'm going to trust that what's happening right now in my life is you at work. Because you know something? It is. It is. Let's pray together. What do you need to say to the Lord about His work in your life on this 18th of December? How's it going, my friend?
Are you able to pick up the tune yet of what God is doing? Or does there seem to be dissonance, a lack of harmony, not much sense in the rhythm of things? Rather than trying to write the music yourself, will you yield and surrender to the Lord? That's what Mary did. That's what Joseph did. That's what Zechariah did. They didn't understand at the time. But they said, Yes, Lord, be it unto me according to your word. What a great way to live. Will you tell that to the Lord today, God?
Let it be to me according to what pleases you. Father, I pray that we may see someday the result of the work you are doing right now in our lives. Let us hear someday the orchestration of it all. But today I pray that you will give us patience and faith to believe that you are at work composing a unique and beautiful tune and composition in the life of each of us. Help us to be quiet, to be yielded as you do your work. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.