When the Fullness of Time Came
Notes
Transcript
A somewhat modern song of the Christmas season is called, “We Need A Little Christmas”. It was first performed by Angela Lansbury in the Broadway musical, Mame, in 1966 and was based on the aftereffects of the 1929 stock market crash. For many, this year of 2020 has at least seemed as bad as 1929 even though none of us here experienced that difficult year and have no way of comparing the two. Nonetheless, we all need a little Christmas.
At this time of year, even though Jesus was not born on December 25th and the date is based on a pagan tradition, we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior – and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that regardless of the many scrooges on social media who legalistically attempt to steal your joy in celebrating. The commercialization and material aspects of this season have definitely gone overboard and can detract us from what we celebrate if we allow, but it is still a most wonderful time of the year.
If we are intentional about what we choose to celebrate, and in how we fix our focus, we can indeed honor and thank our God for the incredible gift of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. God has been, still is, and always will be perfect in His timing for our world and for each of us individually. Let’s look at how His perfect timing impacts what we celebrate as Christmas.
Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of Galatians.
Galatians 4:1-7
Let’s pray.
The context of this passage is how the churches of Galatia, modern-day Turkey, were being deceived and influenced by a group known as the Judaizers. These false teachers were Jews who refuted salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. They did not necessarily reject that Jesus Christ was crucified and rose again, but they did reject that salvation came through Him and Him only. Specifically, they taught that the Law of Moses still was necessary to adhere to, especially the rite of circumcision, to be saved.
In our time and culture, we do not view circumcision in such a manner, but we do bring in many other legalistic teachings and traditions that are just as damaging and dangerous. Adding any work or deed of the flesh, any man-made or church-mandated tradition, or any other thing to God’s grace is not biblical.
This is so difficult for most of us to accept because there is a desperate need within us to contribute something or do something to deserve what God has done for us, at least in our minds. The one major flaw in that thinking is that God’s grace is 100% undeserved and unmerited; we can’t earn what God has done for us and we cannot ever repay Him for what He has done for us. Any even small belief that we can or must contribute to our salvation is proclaiming that the cross was not enough for us, and beloved, that is blasphemy.
There is nothing we can take credit for in salvation. There is nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it, and nothing we can do to keep it. The Holy Spirit draws us to the truth that we are great sinners in need of a great Savior, Jesus Christ paid 100% of the debt that we accrued by our sins, and God the Father thus has justified us through the blood of Christ. If you have repented of your sins, confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and Master of your life, and if you have by faith alone believed that the Father raised Jesus from the dead, then you have been declared righteous and holy by God.
You did nothing because the Scripture says that even the faith required to believe was supplied by God. And it is only the traditions of mankind and the church that has imposed all manner of burdensome rules and regulations to make us believe that we must now somehow maintain that status of being justified by God; we have been duped by power-hungry men that we must earn the right to remain saved, and that is not even close to what the Bible teaches nor what the Christmas story is all about.
Beloved, if you simply think biblically, you will easily see that it makes no sense whatsoever to think that God would sacrifice His Son to such a cruel death for our salvation, and then leave it in our hands to keep it. None of us can keep it, so if that were the truth, Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection is meaningless. If you and I could lose our salvation we would, every day of the week.
Once we have trusted in Christ, trusted in the truth of who Jesus is, trusted in the gospel message, turned to God in repentance, we are saved to the uttermost. Our lives will be transformed, and we will then desire to follow the principles of Scripture, desire to honor and worship God, desire to love and serve one another, but not out of some demonic fear that we will somehow lose what God has freely given to us. But that a sermon for another day.
Galatians 4:1-2
In Bible times, and to a great extent still today in most cultures, a son or daughter born into a wealthy family was an heir or heiress to the family fortune and estate. But as children, they had no rights to the estate until they were of age and until the father determined that they received the full rights of the inheritance.
In the Greek culture of the Apostle Paul’s day, these heirs, while still children were under the authority of certain trusted household slaves who were given charge to teach and train the children. The children were heirs of everything but were under guardians and managers who not only taught and instructed but often had full authority to punish and discipline these heirs, yet they were almost invariably slaves of the father’s estate and would eventually be slaves of the heirs they were raising.
Galatians 4:3
So, what kind of bondage is Paul referring to and what does he mean by elemental things of the world? I’ll deal with the elemental things, first.
Hold your place in Galatians and skip ahead a bit to the Book of Colossians.
Colossians 2:6-8
There is a lot to unpack in this brief passage, but I just want us to see how Paul is using this phrase elemental things, or elemental principles, in both of these passages – it is the same phrase in Greek in both verses. Here in Colossians, it is clear that Paul associates the elemental principles of the world with deceptive human philosophy and traditions. The freedom that was purchased by Christ is constantly under attack by Satan, who influences men to add to and impose all manner of mandates and philosophies and traditions upon us, to enslave us once again to laws and rules and regulations that Jesus eliminated at the cross.
There is so much more I would like to say on this passage, but we need to get back to Galatians or we’ll be here this morning, much too long.
Galatians 4:3
The bondage, or enslavement that is mentioned in our verse, is tied into these elemental things of the world, these man-made traditions and philosophies that have been influenced by Satan. I feel compelled to explain something else here.
In and of themselves, many of the traditions that have been initiated by the church through the ages, are harmless and could even be done out of a genuine devotion to God. In Romans 14, the Apostle Paul teaches us that this is perfectly okay. Paul is teaching this general principle in Romans 14, but he uses for examples celebrating special days and eating certain foods – both simply for illustrative purposes because they were both controversial issues in the church of his time.
What Paul teaches there, which would include for us deciding to celebrate Christmas, is that if you are celebrating certain special days, if you are choosing to eat or not eat certain foods but you are doing so to honor and glorify and thank God, then have at it with all the devotion and dedication you can muster. But do not think that these acts of devotion have any connection to obtaining or maintaining your salvation – do not even think that these acts of devotion gain you any additional favor with God.
Our salvation was complete at the very moment we trusted in Christ. God’s love for you is complete and will never change; He loves you perfectly and forever if you are indeed one of His redeemed children. You can do nothing to make Him love you more and nothing to make Him love you less. Of course, we are to follow and obey the principles of His Word to please and honor and glorify Him, and to store up out treasure and rewards in heaven, but our status with Him never changes once we are forgiven and converted.
So, traditions have their place if we do not attach them to salvation or God’s favor. When we do attach them to obtaining or maintaining our salvation, this current verse and many other verses teach us that we are willingly picking up the chains of slavery that we have been freed from. We are relegating ourselves back to being under guardians and managers even though we are of age and are full and active heirs of the Father who have no business acting like slaves.
The entirety of Romans 6 is about our freedom from the bondage of sin once we have been redeemed by Christ, our freedom from the mandates of the Law, our freedom from the penalty of breaking God’s Law.
1 Peter 2:9-10 tells us in regard to our status in Christ as free from the bondage of sin and law, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of the darkness and into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Jesus Himself said, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Do not enslave yourself to traditions and man-made legalism.
Galatians 4:4-5
Beloved, this is the Christmas story. God, in His perfect timing, determined that mankind’s enslavement to the Law was over. God the Father sent God the Son to be born of a virgin, to be born under the oppressive Law, so that we might be redeemed from the penalty of the Law, the penalty of sin, and be made heirs of the Father through adoption as sons and daughters of the King.
This is Christmas. This is what we celebrate. This is what we now live for. This is the reason we sing, the reason we experience His presence, His joy, His love, His peace, His mercy, His grace, and His salvation.
Jesus is the source of our adoption as sons and daughters of God the Father. Think about what Christ did. He left heaven to enter the womb of Mary for nine months, He then endured being an infant, a child, an adolescent, a teenager, a young adult, and a man – approximately 33 years of experiencing human life without sin, only to be brutally tortured and then cruelly murdered on a cross of wood, all to pay the penalty for your sins and mine so that we might be freed from the bondage of sin and Satan.
Beloved, how could we possibly diminish and marginalize what Jesus did for us by either refusing to repent of our sins and confess His as our Lord, or by being deceived into believing that we must somehow do something additional to gain or maintain salvation. Salvation is a gift – you don’t earn a gift. A gift is given with no strings attached.
Hopefully, you will be gathering with friends and/or family this upcoming week. And if you do, you will be giving gifts, not because your loved ones earned the gifts but simply because you love them and want to express your love in that gift. How heartbreaking would it be if you gave a gift and the one you loved refused it and walked away?
God’s gift to you is eternal forgiveness and salvation through the infinite cost of His Son, Jesus being sent to earth to pay the penalty for our sins. This gift is a gift of everlasting love, it is the gift of freedom and eternal life in heaven with God and with all who have also been recipients of this amazing gift.
But do not assume that the gift is yours by something you have done to deserve it. Do not think that your good deeds have outweighed you bad. Do not assume that church attendance, or family heritage, or money you drop in the offering basket, or anything else you have done earns you anything. It’s a gift, beloved, and it is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It is only applied to you as you recognize and admit that you are a sinner and turn to God in abject repentance. Then and only then, you can apply our last two verses.
Galatians 4:6-7
The proof of salvation is having the Holy Spirit of God living within you. This proof is manifest in your praise and worship which will overflow from your hearts as generated by the Spirit. You cannot contain this expression of gratefulness and praise. You will now know the almighty and sovereign God of the universe as Abba! As Father! This is an intimate term of endearment. In our vernacular it is papa or daddy. And if that kind of relationship does not exist between you and God, then as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith.”
Once you have that assurance and that evidence, you also can apply the last truth in this passage; the truth that you are no longer a slave, but a son (or daughter), and also an heir of God which is an inheritance of heaven, or heaven’s treasures, and of all good things.
Yes indeed, we all need a little Christmas. Do not walk away from the gift that God is offering you this morning. There is no guarantee that you will have the opportunity to accept that gift ever again.
Let’s pray.