Ep. 125 | God's Perfect Timing at Christmas
Speaker: Hunter Hoover
Available on all podcasting platforms
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Available on all podcasting platforms -
Summary
Hunter observes God's perfect timing at Christmas.
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Scriptures Explored: Galatians 4:4-7; Genesis 3; Genesis 12; Genesis 14; 2 Samuel 7; Daniel 7; Isaiah 9; Isaiah 52-53; Luke 1:67-79; Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7; Matthew 2:6; Micah 5; Hosea 2; Galatians 3:21-24
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Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi
Speaker’s Bio
Hunter grew up in Montana and now serves the Church in Albany Oregon where he works as a youth and young adults pastor. He and his wife Ana stay busy with two kids. Hunter loves studying the Bible and communicating it in a way which encourages further exploration of others.
Transcript
Intro:
Hey there, welcome to Pickled Parables. This podcast is presented by Parable Ministries as a Bible teaching resource. Thank you for joining us. Pickled Parables is a podcast about taking in and living out the Bible. Here we will study, contemplate and testify to the Bible's incredible teachings and how it leads us to live better lives. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. We hope today's message finds you well.
Message:
Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of Pickled Parables.
My name is Hunter Hoover, and I have the honor of sharing with you this week.
But before we begin, Merry Christmas.
If you're listening to this on the day it releases, it's Christmas morning.
And one of the things that often happens this time of season is we kind of get lost in the bustle.
Those who are in the church or around the church have heard the Christmas story, and oftentimes we hear it.
And it's one of those stories that kind of lives in our Christian catalog of great seasonal stories.
And because we revisit it every year, sometimes we can fall into the habit of hearing the story and nodding along during the season.
If you are not in the church or not a part of the church, I would encourage you to become a part of a church.
But for those purposes, the Christmas story, in a nutshell, is Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary.
She and her husband-to-be Joseph travel to Bethlehem because of a census, and when they get there, there is no room for them.
And so Mary is forced to have her baby boy in a stable nearby.
And shepherds in the fields, in the surrounding area, see this star, and there is this angel choir that appears to them, and it communicates the birth of the son of David and tells them that this is the son of God to be worshiped.
In other parts of the Gospel accounts of the story, we read of the three wise men who travel from afar to come and give gifts and give worship to this baby Jesus.
He was probably a bit older by then.
And this is the story.
It's the one that is captured in the scene of every nativity scene this time of year.
The other thing that happens in the holiday season is we can get into the habit of rushing around and some rushing around is good as we are serving and giving back and giving gifts and celebrating.
We have much to celebrate this season.
I do not share that brief Christmas story to say that it is not a story worth sharing and it is not a story worth celebrating.
It is.
The goal of this episode is to increase our appreciation for the gift God gave us of His Son as we observe this Christmas day.
When I was a kid, I think probably most children in the fourth through eighth grade demographic wanted a Nintendo Wii.
The trouble was, Nintendo had no way of knowing how difficult the Nintendo Wii would be to get.
I remember my mom, and I knew what she was doing.
I knew she was trying to lock down the Nintendo Wii, but she would go out and she was checking stores and running in, and it truly felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Jingle All the Way.
He's trying to lock down the Turbo Man.
My mom is trying to lock down the Nintendo Wii.
As Christmas got closer and it got closer, I started to not really see a box under the tree that was Nintendo Wii shaped, and it was a bummer.
Then as Christmas morning started and you start unwrapping your gifts, you unwrap your gifts, unwrapped a container that I presumed was a movie.
Then I opened it up and there it was, a Nintendo Wii game.
This would have been a moment of absolute excitement had I already opened a Nintendo Wii, but with no Nintendo Wii, a game for the system did me little good as a child.
My mom taught me to appreciate the things you get even if they're not exactly what you want.
And so I was like, oh, thank you, you know, tried to not focus on the fact that I couldn't play it.
About five to ten gifts later, in the back where I couldn't see it as well was a Nintendo Wii.
It gave purpose to the game.
And that Nintendo Wii, though I was going to get it, it came at a time that just seemed, it seemed so perfect, it gave purpose to this other stuff.
Sometimes we receive a gift and we receive it and we don't really appreciate its value until we take a look at it or until it is realized in another light.
This also happened recently with Ana and I's, we had a freezer unit go out in our garage and almost the same couple days that our freezer went out, a local food bank was selling their old freezers for a tenth of a price of a new one and we were able to procure a new freezer without really losing much if any of our food.
You might hear these stories and you might say, oh, that's a happy coincidence or man, Hunter's really lucky to have gotten a Nintendo Wii.
I was.
And those things might be true, but I'm going to tell you that while I might not have been thanking God for this Nintendo Wii, looking back, I think my parents pulled a funny on me by giving me the game first.
But I was very thankful to them for understanding that I needed the one for the other.
I was very thankful to God that our freezer went out when it did and that we were able to get a new one so quickly.
Sometimes gifts mean more to us when we get them at the right time or when we really need them.
Today on the show, to increase our appreciation of God's gift of Jesus Christ this Christmas day, we're going to look at how God's timing was perfect in Christmas.
Sometimes things in our lives or in history play out and God lets us see how perfect His timing is in those things.
Other times, God's timing is perfect, and we can miss it or it takes some work to recognize how good God's timing is.
Or sometimes that timing comes to us in a story we know so well that we forget just how perfect things were.
To begin our conversation about God's timing, we're going to, instead of looking at the Christmas story, turn to Galatians 4.
To give you some background to the book of Galatians, if you want to know more about Galatians, Jesse has done some good work on Galatians here on this podcast.
You can go back and search for those.
But in Galatians, the Apostle Paul is writing to a church to remind them that Jesus' death has ushered in a new covenant.
Paul tells them that the way a person enters into this new covenant has nothing to do with their ethnicity or their culture or any work that they could do or what merit they have or any sort of human tradition they might practice.
Rather, we enter into this new covenant only as a result of the work of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
As a participant in and recipient of this new covenant, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and as such, we ought to live as if we have been filled with the Holy Spirit.
It is within this letter's context that Paul writes in Galatians 4.4, he says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of women, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
God's timing is perfect.
Paul tells us in Galatians that God sent his Son, Jesus, in the fullness of time.
We don't really use this phrase, the fullness of time, much anymore.
But the idea of fullness of time is a way of communicating that when things were at the exact right moment and conditions were perfect for this event to happen.
Paul says, when the time and conditions were that way, God sent the gift of his Son.
We might hear that and think, well, yeah, I know, I love the Christmas story.
But it does well to remind ourselves that the Jewish people at the time of Jesus had been waiting for their Messiah for a long time.
Much of the Bible eagerly expects and looks forward to the event of this Messiah arriving to usher in a kingdom for God's people.
We see, nods to, and looks forward all throughout the Old Testament scriptures wherein we see glimpses, and we hear God suggest and say that this Messiah character is coming.
These begin as early as Genesis 3, where after falling into sin, God addresses all three players in the story.
And when he gets to the serpent, he tells the serpent that a son of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent, even though that serpent would deal a wound to the heel of that son.
Later in Genesis 12, God promised Abram, whom he called from his homeland, that he would bless Abram, and that through him, all the nations of the world would be blessed.
Just a couple chapters later in Abram's story, Abram, in cutting a covenant with God, is put to sleep and sees a vision of God walking through the pieces wherein God assumes the role of both parties in the covenant, saying if Abram can't uphold his end, he God would die instead.
God promised David in 2 Samuel 7 to establish the throne of his son for all time.
In Daniel's vision, in Daniel 7, he sees the Ancient of Days giving dominion over all things to the Son of Man.
God, the Ancient of Days, handing his rule and authority over to one called the Son of Man.
Isaiah speaks about the idea of the coming of God who is going to be like a king in Isaiah 9, but he also looks at this idea as them being a suffering servant in Isaiah 52 and 53.
They anticipated the Messiah's coming because God clearly communicated to them a plan for him to come.
That's why, as you begin your Advent a few weeks ago and you open up your Christmas story in the Bible, it doesn't begin with the story of the baby Jesus, born in a manger, swaddled in clothes.
It begins with the story of an elderly priest and his barren wife and the birth of John the Baptist.
To share briefly, their story is Zechariah and Elizabeth were unable to have kids, and then when Zechariah's lot is chosen to go into the temple and do his service in the temple, he is encountered by an angel who strikes him mute after it is revealed to him that they will have a son.
And so he is struck mute, he is unable to speak, and he is unable to communicate until the day that his son is born.
This is both a striking thing based on Zechariah's challenge to the notice that he is going to receive a son, but it also serves as kind of an extended metaphor for the people of Israel.
Zechariah's prophecy, when he is able to speak after John's birth, not only breaks his silence in his life being struck mute, but it stands to break God's silence to his people after what was a 500 year long pause on prophetic word.
We can read this prophecy that Zechariah shares in Luke 1 verses 67 through 79.
I'm going to go ahead and read it for you.
So after being struck mute and his son is born, this is Zechariah's prophecy.
It says, and his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel!
For he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from avold, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us, that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear and holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And then he addresses his son John, and says, And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace.
What a prophecy to end the silence.
God was going to do all that he had been telling his people he was going to do for centuries.
We might hear that and say, as I believe the Jewish people heard it and said, why did God wait so long?
Like why this 500 year pause?
Why didn't God spare them the Babylonian exile?
Or how could he allow the ransacking of the holy place in the time of the Maccabees?
And at the point of our story, would God really look on the influence of the Roman Empire in the promised land and wait to send his son?
And my short answer is yes.
But it also serves to note that though God waited this time to send his son, as Paul says at the exact right time, God was faithful to his people at every moment of those hardships.
He never once left them.
Though he was maybe a bit more quieter than they'd liked, he didn't leave them.
When God makes a covenant with people, he keeps his end of the deal every single time.
That's another great reminder for the Book of Galatians, as we look towards this new covenant Paul speaks about.
But as we learn and when we look at Jesus' birth and life, and as Paul asserts, Jesus came as a baby at the exact perfect time.
How can that be the case?
I want to explore briefly to help grow our appreciation of the Christmas story.
How Jesus arrived at the exact perfect time.
First, Jesus arrives at just the right time in history to fulfill every single Old Testament prophecy regarding his birth.
To recount all of the Old Testament prophecies that speak specifically or hint vaguely at the coming of Jesus at his birth would fill a couple of podcast episodes, and maybe that's in our future.
However, I want to take just a moment to highlight some of these prophecies as they are presented to us through the writings of Matthew in his gospel.
Matthew keys in on this when he tells Jesus' birth story, and we see the first of these prophecies in Matthew 1, and verse 23.
Behold, the virgins shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
In this part of the story, we are told that Joseph took Mary to be his wife despite Mary being pregnant, because her pregnancy occurred miraculously, and to fulfill a prophecy found in Isaiah 7.
Before we move on, I want to note, the faith and the level of faith Joseph exhibits in sticking with Mary.
In Matthew 2,6, we are told that Jesus was born in Judah to fulfill a prophecy spoken in Micah 5.
Later, Matthew says Joseph had to flee to Egypt at the plans of Herod to kill the little boys, and in doing so, it fulfills a prophecy of Jeremiah.
But, that this also fulfills a separate prophecy about Jesus returning to Nazareth and fulfilling a prophecy from Hosea 2.
After Herod dies, his son, Archelaus, reigns over Judah after him, and being worried that Herod's son would be a lot like his dad, and being told by an angel in a dream to do so, Joseph took Mary and Jesus and settled in Nazareth.
Or, as Matthew 2.23 says, And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken of the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
God sent Jesus at the exact perfect time in history to fulfill all of the Old Testament prophecies that look forward toward His birth.
Or, as Paul put it, In the fullness of time, God sent His Son.
But how He did so is also significant, and lends to God's timing.
God sent His Son at a time and in a way that would accomplish His purposes.
God did not just get the timing right, He got the means right as well.
That begs the question, though.
We've seen how the timing was right, or at least we're beginning to.
And the Christmas story tells us the means and the method.
Born a baby, born of a virgin, in a stable.
But what was the purpose?
What was God's perfect purpose in sending us the gift of His Son?
If we continue in Galatians, we're going to find out.
Galatians 4, moving into verse 4.
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Jesus came to this earth as a baby, born of a woman, and subject to the laws of the land, under the moral implications of God's law, just like every other person was.
Jesus did that to redeem those under the law, and to adopt those under the law as sons of God.
So, Jesus came at the exact perfect time, in the exact perfect conditions, to redeem those who were under the law.
Paul has already spoken to his audience about what it means to be under the law in Galatians 3, and what that law can accomplish in their lives.
We read this in 3 verse 21.
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?
Certainly not.
For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.
But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
God gave the law to help guide us in how to live before Jesus came, but it didn't make anyone righteous.
It showed people what righteousness looked like, but it didn't make them righteous before God.
The law could never save.
It would never save.
The law was simply there to point people to God, and point them to God's plan to ultimately save and give a moral framework for living while we wait for that salvation to arrive.
In this faith in Jesus, God redeems those under the law and its penalties, held us captive and guarded until Jesus did so.
Jesus was born under that law.
And in dying and fulfilling that law himself, he redeemed those who were under it who could not.
Galatians not only focuses on what Jesus redeemed us from, namely the penalties of the law, the understanding that we cannot keep the law, and as a result face the wrath of God, but Paul focuses even more so on what he redeems us to and saves us to.
The purpose of Jesus coming in the fullness of time, according to Galatians 4, is so that, or in order that, he might give us the ability to receive adoption as sons.
Jesus was born.
He was God's son, born as a baby, in order that one day he could die just to make us children of God as well.
Adoption is an amazing thing because it is these parents who solely motivated by love, not by biology or social contract, to their child, but solely motivated by love, choose to love a child as if it were their own.
It's a beautiful thing.
God adopts us.
Jesus died to share the Father with us, to give us the gift of being called a child of God, and He did so at the exact perfect time in history, in the exact religious landscape that would accomplish it.
Today, listener, if you hear this, and you have not put your faith in Jesus Christ, and as such have not been adopted into God's family, I would invite you this Christmas season to receive God's gift of His Son.
Paul says, this is the point of Jesus being born of a woman.
In other words, it's the whole point of Christmas.
If you have accepted that gift, you can testify to the joys of being a child of God, and we should do so.
That gift is not only an eternal one that we look forward to one day, but it is a gift that we need and can enjoy right now today.
Paul keys in on this as he continues in Galatians 4.
He says, verse 6, And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
When we accept that gift, God welcomes us as full members of the family.
We receive the spirit who is God within us today, and we are moved from a position of slave under the law that we can't keep, maybe tending to things in God's house, if that, to a position of child of God saved by Jesus filled with his spirit, a part of the family.
We have full benefits as a child of God.
We aren't some strange friend or half cousin who we aren't sure while they're there.
Paul goes on to say, we are heirs.
Who was the heir?
Up until the moment of his death and resurrection, the only heir to the kingdom of God was Jesus Christ.
Jesus, whose kingdom it is, remember, Daniel and the Son of Man, the Ancient of Days, God's words to King David of his never-ending throne.
It's God's gift to give, and he gives it willingly.
And he gives it in a way that allows us to share in the benefits of the kingdom of God.
Paul says, at just the right time in history, Jesus, the heir of heaven, Son of God, chose to be born of one of the lowliest births a human can have, in a barn out back, subjected himself to the world, made himself a slave to the law, just so that he can die to save and make us children of God as well, and heirs along with him.
It's a gift.
This time of year can be hectic.
We can often feel like we don't have enough time.
There's a thousand things to do, about as many people to see, and we have things we need to do to give back, bills to pay, wash the car, feed the hog, oh yeah, and make sure all the presents get wrapped before Christmas morning.
If you're hearing this, hopefully you got it all done.
But as you settle in this Christmas and the days that follow, I want to remind you of two things.
There's plenty of time.
And if something got missed, it's okay.
We must take time in the middle of our Christmas season and especially on our Christmas day to remember God's gift to us.
His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so they can receive adoption as children of God.
Paul reminds us, when it comes to time, that gift came at the exact perfect time in history to the right part of the world, in the right political landscape, in the correct religious demographic, to not only fulfill every prophecy considered with that event, and not only bring about God's plan from the Old Testament in the Messiah, and promise to His people to pass, but also that He could save you and call you His child.
God's timing is perfect.
He came to us at the exact right time.
And it is my hope and it is my prayer that if you know Jesus, take time this busy season and remember that He did this for you.
You have your saving faith in Jesus Christ because Jesus was born and later died for you.
Again, listener, if you have not put your saving faith in Jesus Christ, if you have not become a child of God, it is my prayer that this Christmas season, you will accept God's gift of salvation that began when Jesus came as a baby, God in flesh, God with us for the purpose to one day die on a cross so that you can receive forgiveness of sins and be called a child of God as well.
That's the reason for this season.
God's timing is perfect, his purposes are perfect, and his gift is perfect as well.
Thank you all again.
Merry Christmas.
And we'll see you soon.
Bye now.
Outro:
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