Learning to Tell Time - Part A

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons.

God's timing is never off. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip shares a message about what Jesus accomplished when He came to the world at just the right time in history. We're glad you've joined us today. Connect with Skip Heitzig is here to connect listeners like you to God's unchanging truth and bring more people into His family. You can take part in this life-changing work today with a generous gift to support this ministry and keep this program reaching you and others across the globe. This year, Pastor Skip wants to expand the reach of the ministry into all major US cities. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give generously and share God's love with others. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for changing lives. Okay, we're going to Galatians 4 as Skip begins today's lesson. One of the most frequently asked questions that I get as a pastor is what time is it? Now what time is it chronologically as much as prophetically? Are we in the last days? What time is it in God's prophetic calendar? What's the time? What's going on?

What's going to happen next? Unfortunately, there weren't enough people asking that question during Jesus' time 2,000 years ago. They should have been asking, hey, what time is it? Because Jesus, when he comes on the scene, rebukes the leaders for not knowing what time it is. He said, how is it that you can discern the face of the skies but not understand or discern this time? He held them accountable, responsible to the point of pronouncing judgment upon them nationally for not knowing the time. He predicted the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and listen to what he said.

Listen to why. Because you didn't know the time of your visitation. So I want to help you today learn how to tell time biblically speaking. Why is it that Jesus came to earth at the time that he did? Why 2,000 years ago? Why didn't God send his son into the world right after the fall in the garden with Adam and Eve? That's where the trouble began.

Why not nip it in the bud early? Or for that matter, why not send his son in more modern times like today? There's more people on the earth. The technology is better. You could arguably say it would make a greater impact.

I mean, can you imagine the resurrection being televised worldwide? So why did God send his son into the world at the time in which he did? Now in answering that question and in teaching you to tell time, I'm going to introduce you to a new term. Some of you have never heard the term.

Others of you have, but you are not sure what it means exactly. And it's the word, the term Shiloh. Shiloh.

Now Shiloh is a word that first comes to us in Genesis 49 when Jacob the patriarch is about to die. He's on his deathbed and his boys are gathered around him, all the 12 sons of Jacob that will become the 12 tribes of Israel. And he goes through each one, one by one, and gives a deathbed prophecy. He predicts what's going to happen to them and their tribe later on. And he comes to his son Judah and he says this, the scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

Now what does that mean? Who or what is Shiloh? Well, it's interesting that the traditional Jewish interpretation, rabbinical interpretation through the ages is that it's some reference to the coming Messiah. Shiloh equals the Messiah. So who was Shiloh? We know what happened with those 12 boys. They became 12 tribes. They grew. They became a young, small nation of families. They went down to Egypt and for 400 years they were under the bondage of Pharaoh. They cried out to God. God sent them a deliverer, not Shiloh, but Moses. Moses wasn't from the tribe of Judah.

He was from the tribe of Levi. Eventually, under Joshua, they inherited the promised land. They occupied the land. They spread.

They grew. But Joshua was from the tribe of Ephraim, not Judah. He wasn't Shiloh. While they were in the land, they cried out for a king.

God allowed them to have King Saul as their first king of Israel. He was a Benjamite. He was not Shiloh. He was a failure. So the Lord raised up King David, a man after God's own heart.

Don't you love that description of him? A man after God's own heart from the tribe of Judah, but he wasn't Shiloh. God told David that he would have a son who would occupy the throne, and we know who that was immediately.

It was King Solomon, but Solomon wasn't Shiloh. So after many years, the world waited a long time for just the right time until God sent that one. Now I want you to look at Galatians chapter 4. The key verse is going to be verse 4, but we do need to get a little context. We want to read what leads up to it, and so you'll notice in Galatians 4, beginning in verse 1, Paul the Apostle writing says, Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is the master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.

Even so, we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. You know, we sometimes forget that the central theme of all of Scripture is the single person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the mega theme. He is the central character from Genesis to Revelation, so that the Old Testament prophets predict him. They promise him. The Old Testament, Christ is promised. In the Gospels, Christ is presented. In the Book of Acts, Christ is proclaimed. In the Epistles, Christ is pondered. And in the Book of Revelation, Christ is predicted. But it's all about Jesus Christ. And unfortunately, we think we can sort of jump in right in the New Testament without the benefit of the Old Testament.

That's why this series, Against All Odds, has been beneficial. And we're going to jump in right in the New Testament without being beneficial, because you read this man fulfilled, this prediction made by that prophet. You sort of have to know what that prophet said to really get that. So if you just jump into the New Testament without the Old Testament, it's like going to a play, but you don't get there till Act 2. And you know, that's always a problem. If you come into the play during Act 2, you're going to be that nuisance who has to whisper to people around you, who's that guy? You say that.

What's happening now? Well, if you'd have been here in Act 1, you'd have picked it up, right? So we read the Old and the New Testament together because the whole package gives us the central character and the storyline so that it all makes sense. So with that in mind, I want to show you from this text five elements that point to Jesus' first coming at being at exactly the right time. And there were several things that were right.

First of all, the expectation was right. Verse 3, even so we, when we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of this world. Now Paul, in this section, is describing his religion, Judaism, like being a child growing up in a home. A young child who's a minor, coming of age.

He's at home, he stays at home, and he is trained at home until he grows up and he is launched into the world. And so Paul the Apostle is saying, just as a child is tethered to teachers and guardians until he comes of age, we were tethered to our religious system of Judaism until Jesus Christ came. But interestingly, Paul calls that a bondage. Notice that in verse 3, we were in bondage. He uses the language of slavery in this section. And that word bondage is tied to another important word in verse 5, redeem. That's all bondage, that's all slavery language.

Redeem means to buy back by paying a price. So he says we were in bondage. Now the Jewish people understood slavery probably better than any other people group at the time because they had been in slavery and bondage for thousands of years on numerous occasions. The first being when they were down in Egypt, they were slaves under the oppression of Pharaoh for 400 years. Moses was their deliverer, he brought them out.

But it didn't end there. Pretty soon the Assyrians would come in and take them captive. Later on the Babylonians would come in and take many more of them captive. They would come back to the land under Ezra and Nehemiah. But then once they're back in the land, there would be more slavery in the future when the Seleucid Syrians came in and killed and plummeted and plundered the people and exiled many more of them.

God sent them another deliverer between the Old and New Testament, a Jewish deliverer by the name of Judas Maccabeus. But their slavery didn't end. At the time the New Testament was written, at the time Paul is writing Galatians, the Roman government subjugated them and they were slaves of Rome.

They paid exorbitant taxes, they had to obey all sorts of rules and regulations, the Roman government stripped away many of their rights as citizens. So they knew what it was to be in bondage. And, by the way, even if they didn't have any human taskmaster at all, they were still in bondage to their own religion, their own law.

You know why? Because God gave them the law but no one was ever able to keep it fully. They failed in keeping the law. That's Paul's whole premise in Galatians and the writer of Hebrews and Hebrews. God gave them a law, they couldn't keep it. So the Lord put in the law a system of animal sacrifices to have bloodshed, to cover all of their failures and sins. But those things never ended.

There was a sacrifice every day, every week, every month, every year for your whole lifetime you would be used to this endless, tedious pageant of sacrifice and ritual and ceremony that never brought you any closer to God. It's sort of like the opening scene from the movie Groundhog's Day. Remember that movie? Back in the 90s, Groundhog's Day, Bill Murray starred in it and every day the day opened the same way. Alarm clock went off, same old tune every day.

Same sequence of events every day. Paul is saying Judaism was like Groundhog's Day. You wake up, you sacrifice, you wake up, you sacrifice, you sacrifice and it never brought you closer to God. So we were in bondage to those basic elements of the world. Now with the bondage came a longing and anticipation and expectation. They were left in their bondage saying, when will Messiah come?

When will the bondage end? And it was so inculcated into their culture that there was a prayer that the pious Jews prayed every single day and many still do in orthodox circles to this day. It goes like this, it goes like this, I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Messiah and even though He tarries, yet I will wait for Him every coming day. So they had always expected the Deliverer to come. But did you know that at the time of Jesus Christ, just before He was born, the expectation in Judaism for the Messiah was at its all-time high. Sources tell us that at that time every Jewish woman wondered if perhaps she wouldn't be the mother of the Messiah. There is a book called The History of Messianic Speculation in Israel. It was written back in 1959 by a very famous rabbi in Jewish circles at the time, Rabbi Hallel Silver.

Listen to one paragraph I pulled out. He says, and I quote, prior to the first century messianic interest was not excessive. The first century however, especially the generation before the destruction of the second temple, witnessed a remarkable outburst of messianic emotionalism. When Jesus came into Galilee spreading the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, He was voicing the opinion universally held that the age of the kingdom of God was at hand. And He closes the paragraph by saying the Messiah was expected at the second quarter of the first century. You know when Jesus came?

Second quarter, first century. No wonder when John the Baptist is down at the Jordan River plopping people in the water baptizing him, the first questions out of the mouth of the rulers in Jerusalem is, are you the Messiah? They were expecting him and that expectation was at its all-time high. So the expectation was right.

Second thing to make note of is the season was right. Look at verse 4. Paul says, when the fullness of the time had come.

Stop. That's a very intriguing phrase. Fullness, play Roma is the Greek word, means complete or full or plump or ripe. The time was perfect, he is saying, the time was ripe like fruit hanging on a tree ready to be plucked at just the right moment. It was the fullness of the time. Now have you noticed that God has ended doing things on time?

Very precise about that. Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells us there is a time for every purpose under heaven. And if you notice that God keeps perfect time, his watch is perfect. Sometimes you think God is late, you're just early. You think God is slow?

No, you're just a little too fast. Charles Spurgeon put it this way, the great clock of the universe keeps good time and the whole machinery of providence moves with unerring punctuality. I've had people tell me, you know, Jesus was a man ahead of his time. Or, well, Jesus was behind the times. No, no, no, no, he came at the fullness of the time.

First words out of his mouth recorded in the Gospel of Mark where the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. So Paul says the season was right, it was the fullness of the time. Now he does not tell us specifically what made the time so ripe, but let me make a few suggestions. What made the time so ripe?

But let me make a few suggestions. The time was right spiritually. I've already told you how there was an expectation, a spiritual expectation at the time of Christ unlike any other time. They were open, they wanted, they were hungry for the Messiah to come. But not only that, did you know that other religions like the Roman religious system and the Greek religious system, that many of the people who subscribe to those beliefs, there was a hunger going on inside of them. They were burned out on the Roman polytheistic form of worship or the Greek polytheism. And they were attracted to Judaism's one God.

And so many were converting in different parts of the world in the first century to Judaism. In fact, if you read your New Testament, you know that the centurion is spoken about favorably in the gospels and in the book of Acts. Many of them believed in the Lord. Jesus commanded one centurion for having more faith than any Jewish people in the entire land. In the book of Acts, there's centurion who invites Peter into his house and comes to faith in Christ. Paul writes about people from Caesar's household converting and following Jesus. So it was the right time spiritually, but it was also the right time culturally for Jesus to come. You know, Alexander the Great had a dream.

Of course, he was dead by this time. But he had a dream that he could make the world Greek. He was a Greek. He wanted to spread the love. So he thought everybody in the world should speak his language and follow his culture. So his dream was to spread Greek language and Greek culture around the world.

And you know what? He was pretty successful. Because for the first time since the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis, during the New Testament times, there was a common language around the world, and that was Greek. It was said that you could go from the British Isles all the way to India, speaking the same language everywhere you went. And what a language it was. The language of Greek.

The most precise language ever to convey human thought. And that is the language of the New Testament. But not only that, Alexander the Great, when he conquered Jerusalem, he encouraged the Jews to travel around the world and colonize the world into pockets of Judaism wherever they went. So that by the time of Jesus, you had these things.

You don't find them in the Old Testament, but you find them in the new synagogues. Jewish meeting places in virtually every city around the world where somebody could pop in, speaking a common language, and share ideas. So it was the right time spiritually, culturally, but it was also the right time politically.

And here's what I mean. The king of the world was Rome. Caesar was in charge. And Rome brought with it what they called the Pax Romana.

You've heard the term? It means the Roman peace. It was 200 years of peace on earth, at least in the Roman world. And it was pretty peaceful. It was a stability enforced by Roman military, essentially.

The power of Rome ensured that the places Rome controlled were peaceful places. So they brought in the Pax Romana. Rome also brought in a road system.

Get this. This is 2,000 years ago. Rome decided to connect all the places in the world that had not been connected by a road system. They built 250,000 miles of roads. Many of them are still paved today. You can walk on them. They're made out of stone. 250,000 miles. Folks, that's 2,000 years ago.

I know roads in Rio Rancho that still aren't paved. The Romans paved the world at the time. So now you have relative safety where people can travel from one part of the world to another part of the world speaking the same language and bringing their ideas with them. And you know who took advantage of that? Paul the Apostle.

It's estimated the Apostle Paul traveled 15,000 miles on foot or by sea during his lifetime. So now you have the gospel in the most precise language ever under the most ideal circumstances ever to people who are hungrier than ever going to places more freely than ever before. It was the fullness of time. So the expectation was right. The season was right. There's something else that was right.

The action was right. Look at verse 4 again. But when the fullness of the time had come, God, now watch how this is written, God sent forth His Son.

Stop right there. I want you to think about that. God sent forth His Son. That implies that Jesus was in one place first before He got sent somewhere else. This phraseology suggests pre-existence. The Knox translation puts it this way. God sent out His Son on a mission to us.

He was somewhere else first, then He got sent here. That concludes part one of this message from the series Against All Odds. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now we want to share about a special resource that will help you give a reason for the hope you have in Christ. Is there archaeological proof that Jesus existed? Did Jesus ever actually claim to be God? Is Jesus really the only way? There's a good chance you'll be asked tough questions like these at some point.

You may ask these questions yourself. That's why we want to send you Josh and Sean McDowell's new book, Evidence for Jesus, to help you answer crucial questions about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Was that truth challenged in the presence of knowledgeable witnesses, especially antagonistic witnesses? Peter on the truth point, he says, men of Israel, listen to these words, you leaders, Jesus of Nazarene, a man attested you, not just to us. See, he threw it right back in the antagonist's lap, said, attested you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. I'll tell you this, folks, if those antagonists had not seen those witnesses, miracles, and signs, Peter would have been lucky to have made it out of there alive.

Instead of what happened historically, thousands were added to the church. Evidence for Jesus will help you confidently answer tough questions like, is there evidence that Jesus was real? Did Jesus actually claim to be God? What makes Jesus unique from other religious figures? Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

And why does that matter? Evidence for Jesus by Josh and Sean McDowell will join classics like More Than a Carpenter and Evidence That Demands a Verdict that have shaped Christian apologetics. We'll send you a copy of Evidence for Jesus as thanks for your gift of $50 or more this month to reach more people with the teaching and resources of Connect with Skiff Heitzig.

So be sure to request your copy of Evidence for Jesus today when you give online securely at connectwithskiff.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. And we're excited to send you more content from Pastor Skip and this ministry right to your mobile device. To join our new text messaging group, just text the word connect to 74759.

That's connect to 74759. Then be on the lookout for your first message, a video from Pastor Skip welcoming you to the group. Tomorrow Skip brings an encouraging word from scripture about waiting on God's timing even when you're discouraged or disheartened. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your burdens on his word. Make a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.