Sermon Tone Analysis

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

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Irreligious individuals occasionally and foolishly charge that there never was a birth of the Christ.

Such individuals appear united in denying the miraculous events that are outlined in the Word of God.

Such thoughtless individuals may not necessarily deny that there actually lived during that particular era a man known as Jesus of Nazareth, but they assume that Luke and Matthew invented and/or created Christian myths in an attempt to enhance His stature.

Some of these scoffers are willing to concede that there may have been a teacher of some local repute who gave rise to these legends, but they doubt that he was any greater than any other religious leader.

Perhaps the strongest argument unbelievers present in support of their infidelity is the assertion that no other writers of Scripture appear to make mention of the miraculous birth.

These infidels display their ignorance of Holy Writ through exposing their folly.

Multiplied texts speak of the birth of the Son of God.

During this holy season I have already presented the testimony of prominent witnesses, including Isaiah, the prophet of royal birth, and John, the beloved disciple.

Today I appeal to the Apostle to the Gentiles.

The Apostle was certainly aware of the birth of Jesus who is the Christ.

Moreover, he was aware of the significance of that birth as is evident from even a casual perusal of his letters.

Focus on one of his earliest letters as we learn of Christmas according to Paul.

*CHRIST THE SON OF GOD WAS BORN AT A DEFINITE TIME*.

“When the fullness of time had come…” These glorious words show that the entry point of the Christian message is at the same time the turning point of history.

Even our system of dating confesses this truth.

It is now 2013 AD—anno Domini, THE YEAR OF OUR LORD.

Apart from the words which are penned here, life offers no future, no hope.

We are left without hope and without God in the world if this is not 2013 THE YEAR OF OUR LORD.

But God has intervened in a way which brings effective and complete salvation—hope to the hopeless and help to the helpless.

That is the Christmas message.

What do you suppose is meant by the Apostle’s phrase, “When the fullness of time had come?”

The Greek word translated fullness of time means exactly that.

The thought conveyed is fulfilment, especially as related to time.

Even a casual acquaintance with the ancient world reveals something of the significance of the Spirit's Word through the Apostle.

Christ was born during the era identified as enjoying Pax Romana.

This is that period of time when the rule of one government insured world-wide peace.

Peace imposed by conquering armies had extended over most of the civilised earth making travel and commerce possible in a way previously unrealised.

Great roads linked the empire of the Caesars, ensuring free and uninterrupted communications with the furthest outposts of civilisation and providing rapid access to all corners of the empire.

An even greater factor unifying the diverse regions of the empire was the all pervasive language and culture of the Greeks.

Greek was the lingua franca of the empire, being readily understood and read throughout the whole Mediterranean world.

Not only linguistically, but also culturally, the ancient world was dominated by the prior educational advances of the Greeks.

Therefore, politically, culturally and linguistically the world was unified—conditions which ensured a rapid spread of the Good News declaring the salvation of Christ the Lord.

Religiously, that ancient world was sunk in a moral abyss so deep that even pagans cried out against it.

Spiritual hunger was everywhere evident as witnessed by the prevalent appeal within every social stratum for spiritual insight from religions introduced from the east.

Those religions in apparent ascendancy within the empire were exactly those ancient religions which had once been confronted by the prophets of God when the Hebrew peoples first entered the Promised Land.

The philosophers contributed in a negative sort of way, casting doubt on the old pagan systems of religion as they looked for some sort of unifying power behind all the polytheistic systems which had previously prevailed.

The Jews themselves had made preparation for the coming of the Christ through the preaching of monotheism in some one hundred fifty synagogues located throughout the empire, and by their anticipation of a Messiah who would right the world's wrongs.

That human longing for communion with God, that spiritual restlessness which pervaded all mankind insured a receptive audience once Christ was come.

These religious longings insured that for the entire world, the time had indeed fully come.

Theologically, several significant factors ensured that the time had fully come.

Just as a father in that ancient culture would determine the time his child became a son, so that heavenly Father chose the time when the world was to pass from its childhood under legal supervision to a period of spiritual sonship.

In other words, God chose the time of transition from one dispensation to the next.

The events surrounding the earthly ministry of the Christ marked the transition from the dispensation of the law to the dispensation of grace.

Daniel had clearly prophesied that the exact time of Messiah's advent could be calculated from the issuing of the Persian decree to rebuild Jerusalem [DANIEL 9:25].

The Messiah was to come during the era of the fourth Gentile empire [DANIEL 2:31 45; 7:1 14].

First, Babylon, then Persia, followed by Greece and finally, Rome, had successively ruled over the land of Israel.

The Magi clearly recognised the significance of the era in which they lived, understanding that the time had fully come; but Jewish religious leaders were ignorant of those same times.

As example of the inability of Jewish religious leaders to recognise the times, consider the following incidents drawn from the pages of the New Testament.

The first relates an incident which occurred when the Pharisees and Sadducees approached Jesus asking that He show them a sign.

Superficially, these religious leaders appear to be honest, but the Master, looking inward to their hearts, sees only wickedness.

They appear to seek confirmation of what they knew to be true, but they are dishonest.

“The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

He answered them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.”

And in the morning, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.”

You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.’

So he left them and departed” [MATTHEW 16:1 4].

Here is another incident when Jesus addressed the blindness of religious leaders.

“When [Jesus] drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!

But now they are hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.

And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation’” [LUKE 19:41 44].

Paul recognised that the religious elite of the world was also spiritually ignorant.

“Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” [1 CORINTHIANS 2:6 8].

*THE BIRTH OF CHRIST THE SON OF GOD WAS A DETERMINED ACT*, according to the Apostle, for God sent His Son.

The verb the Apostle employed in this verse is significant.

Exapésteilen [from exapostéllō] refers to someone who is “sent out from.”

More particularly, the word refers to someone dispatched as an authoritative representative charged with a specific task.

In fact, we would not be out of line to translate this clause, “God sent His Son on a mission.”

Throughout the Scriptures we read that God sent His Son—and that act was considered and deliberate rather than capricious and serendipitous.

What glorious verses the Apostle John has penned in his first epistle.

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins… We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” [1 JOHN 4:9, 10, 14].

Jesus our Master acknowledged repeatedly that He was sent into the world by the deliberate decision of the Father.

Listen to a few of those instances.

“I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.”

“Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” “Now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” [JOHN 12:49; 14:24; 16:5].

Here are several instances recorded during His High Priestly prayer when Jesus testified that He was sent by the Father.

Note the precision with which the Master spoke.

“This is eternal life, that [My disciples] know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

“I have given [My disciples] the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent [My disciples] into the world.”

He predicates His own mission on which the Father sent Him as a model for the mission of those whom He would send.

The disciples of the Master are to model their life and ministry after His own life and ministry; disciples are to accept the commission to go into the world that others may know of the salvation provided in Christ the Lord.

In this prayer, there is yet another extended testimony that the Master’s recognised that He was sent.

Listen to His confession before the Father.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me” [JOHN 17:3, 8, 18, 21- 25].

Even as He issued His commission, Jesus testified that He had been sent by the Father to fulfil a specific mission.

“Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” [JOHN 20:21].

I have frequently taught that our Master’s advent was planned from before the creation of the world.

Thought we accept this truth by faith, finite minds struggle to understand what it means.

The teaching admits of no time before which God did not have in mind to send His Son for the sake of man.