In the Fullness of Time | Heavyweights

Well, I wanted to start this morning by actually talking

about the season itself before we dive into scripture.

Have you ever noticed when you open up the New Testament

or the Old Testament and you read about Judaism,

you find over and over again God laying out for his people

seasons and feasts and festivals and all kinds of symbols,

all provided to Israel as points of remembrance for them

and points of instruction to remind them of Yahweh's

faithfulness and steadfast love.

It's all over the Old Testament.

But then when you examine the evangelical church in the West

today, you don't see much of a hunger

for those types of things, other than the fact

that we observe Easter in the spring

and Christmas in the winter.

And that's pretty much the way most of us were raised.

But if you haven't noticed yet, if you're newer to Oak Hill,

here we believe that it's very, very important

that we make sure that we don't become isolated or disconnected

from our spiritual past.

That's a weakness that I've seen personally

in the church over the last 40 years.

And I think we're worse for it.

So what I think we should do is embrace and enjoy

the types of seasons and holidays and symbols

that God has given to the church,

provided we employ them in the right way.

And that's key, that we employ them in the right way.

It's not enough just to have traditions.

We want to have distinctly Christian traditions that

strengthen our faith, increase our worship,

and build our community life together.

And I'm not really talking about the American aspect

of our holidays, although we're free to enjoy that.

And a lot of us do at Thanksgiving.

I'm talking about the distinctly Christian aspects

of the seasons that are built into the church calendar.

And the fact is, God has hardwired us.

We are creatures of habit.

We like that type of flow in our calendar.

Sometimes good habits, sometimes bad habits.

But an important part of being redeemed in Christ

is by the Spirit's power, creating new habits over time.

And think about this for a second.

First of all, daily habits of holiness,

daily habits of reading God's word

and abiding with Christ in prayer.

And then we have weekly habits of a day like this,

coming together each and every week

to fellowship in the body.

And then monthly habits of coming around the Lord's table

together.

And then, of course, there are yearly habits as well.

Annual seasons and dates in the flow of church life

that we can embrace and use as a way

to anticipate and prepare our hearts for the work

that God has done in our lives.

So whether it's Reformation Sunday, which we just came out

of, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Good Friday,

or Easter, or Pentecost, we should always

ask the question, what can we learn and apply

from those distinctly Christian aspects of those holidays

and symbols?

What can we learn from them?

How can we apply them in our life together?

And I want to say, friends, it's not just about you and I.

If you have kids, if you have grandkids,

you need to think about this.

Because we need to pass those types of uniquely

Christian traditions onto the next generation.

We're called to train them up and to raise them

in the ways of the Lord.

So for our kids and grandkids, we

have to make sure that holidays aren't just about the feels,

right?

That's nice.

But it's more than that.

The biblical truth behind these days

that we are given to celebrate.

To ask, are we doing a good job of modeling Christian

distinctives and the right traditions each year that

will point our kids and our grandkids toward Christ?

And not just the whole seasonal feels.

And as the world continues to grow more and more secular,

I'm telling you, passing along biblical traditions

to the next generation is going to become

more and more important.

Now, with that in mind, let's talk about this season

that we call Advent.

Because I know some of you may not

have grown up with this particular season

or tradition in your life.

In its earliest forms, Advent dates all the way back

to the fourth century.

So it's very, very old.

And from there, it spread in popularity

during the sixth and seventh centuries.

And a whole bunch of great traditions

arose with it, the idea of the Advent wreath

and the lighting of a candle each and every week,

and the use of nativity scenes in churches and private homes,

and great music being written, songs

being written for the saints to help them

worship during the season.

So that's been developed from ancient times.

Now, as I say that, somebody just recently said to me,

you know, Jeff, I kind of like the idea of Advent,

but it feels a little bit too Catholic to me.

A little too Catholic, right?

It's OK if you want to admit that you're like, eh,

I didn't grow up with this, but it feels a little bit Catholic.

I want to make sure you don't fall into that kind of a trap.

OK?

Again, if you're raised evangelical,

you might have been taught that any kind of, quote,

tradition is automatically suspect.

But that's obviously not true, because actually,

every church and every denomination

has its own set of traditions.

It comes down to what you were raised in

and what feels familiar to you.

And while it's true that Advent has been observed

over the centuries by both Roman Catholics and Protestants,

Advent has nothing to do with the false doctrines that

are taught by Rome.

There's no connection whatsoever.

Advent is simply a way for us to focus our hearts and minds

on the biblical account of the nativity

and to celebrate the goodness of God

in sending His one and only Son to the earth

to take on flesh for our sake.

OK?

That is not uniquely Catholic, not even close.

So Advent is good for us, because it

helps us to slow down as a church family.

It helps us to learn how to prepare our hearts.

In fact, I've heard it said, and this is a great quote,

Advent is slow on purpose.

Slow on purpose.

It's drawn out over four weeks to increase our anticipation

and excitement over recognizing that, yeah, our Savior came

and took on flesh, that He was incarnated in the flesh

for our sake.

In a way, it's designed to mirror the unfolding drama

of how God's people in the Old Testament constantly waited

for the arrival of the Messiah.

So each month or each year in our month of waiting,

it gives us just a small inkling of how

we can step into their sandals and we get to wait,

not for centuries, but for four weeks.

But it gives us a little bit of a taste of that.

So we start by singing, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, right?

In sort of these dark tones.

And by the time we get to Christmas Day,

we're singing bright tunes.

We're shouting what?

Joy to the world, because Christ has come.

That's the purpose of Advent.

Does that make sense?

OK, grab your Bibles.

I just wanted to lay that out at the beginning of the series,

because I think that's important for us.

And if you had any questions about this,

like, oh, it feels Catholic, or there's

something just kind of stuck in your craw about this, please,

please don't hesitate to ask me a question.

Grab your Bibles.

We're going to Galatians.

Galatians chapter 3.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Now we have titled this series In the Fullness of Time, right?

Which is an important phrase from Galatians 4.

You probably heard it in our call to worship already

this morning.

And it speaks to a very unique time in human history.

I think you can make the case it's the single most unique

moment in the history of the universe.

And I don't think I'm overstating that, right?

The most unique moment of all time.

But it comes to us wrapped in a particular season,

in a specific era, and rooted in a very

precise historical setting.

And that's the focus of today's message.

We are laying the foundation for the rest of this series.

So let me just share with you where we're headed.

These four Sundays of Advent, we're

going to look at four sets of characters

in the biblical drama of the birth of Christ,

and sort of draw out the profiles of those characters

so that we can better understand the story.

Here's what it's going to look like.

Today we're talking about the heavyweights in the story.

The people in the world at that time

that Christ was born who had very real power in the world.

The heavyweights.

Next Sunday we're talking about the opposite, the nobodies.

Next week is the nobodies.

Joseph and Mary and the shepherds.

The third week we're going to talk about the heralds

in the story, the magi and the angelic host.

And then in our Christmas Sunday, which is on the 22nd,

we'll talk about the prophets.

Both those who were looking forward

to the coming of Christ in the Old Testament,

but also the New Testament prophets in the present,

Simeon and Anna.

So we have lots to talk about.

So that's where we're headed.

Make sense?

OK, good.

I'll remind you of that later.

All right.

Galatians 3.

Let's go to verse 15.

Now, we're moving towards chapter 4.

In particular, our key verse, which is Galatians 4.4.

But I want to start back in chapter 3.

And Paul gives us a pretty complex argument here

that leads up to Galatians 4.4.

So what I want to do, I'm going to read from verses 15 to 26.

We'll read that straight through.

Then I'll come back and try to summarize for you

the argument that he's making before we get to chapter 4.

So Galatians 3, beginning in verse 15,

hear the word of the Lord.

Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations.

Even though it is only man's covenant,

yet when it's been ratified, no one sets it aside

or adds conditions to it.

Now, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

He does not say, and to seeds, plural, as referring to many,

but rather to one.

And to your seed, that is Christ.

What I'm saying is this.

The law, which came 430 years later,

does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God

so as to nullify the promise.

For if the inheritance is based on law,

it is no longer based on a promise,

but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.

Why the law then?

It was added because of transgressions,

having been ordained through angels by the agency

of a mediator until the seed would come

to whom the promise had been made.

Now, a mediator is not for one party only,

whereas God is only one.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

May it never be.

For if a law had been given which was able to impart life,

then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.

But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin

so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ

might be given to those who believe.

Verse 23, but before faith came,

we were kept in custody under the law,

being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed.

Therefore, the law has become our tutor

to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by what?

Faith.

Now that faith has come.

We are no longer under a tutor.

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Stop there.

So here's Paul's logic.

First of all, he's using human relations here

to affirm principles about a covenant.

And he says, look, covenants cannot be invalidated

or changed or attitude once the parties ratify it.

It cannot be broken.

So he reasons God's covenant with Abraham

was in no way affected by the giving of the law

through Moses that happened centuries later.

The covenant and the promises given to Abraham remain.

That's important.

And that means the promise of blessing to Abraham's seed,

which is ultimately his ultimate descendant, the Messiah,

was still in effect at the time the law came.

Understand that?

And that promise, Paul says, comes on the basis of faith,

not on the law because it predates the law.

And in Genesis 15, we're told that Abraham believed God

and it was what?

Credited to him as righteousness.

So that is a statement of faith, not by law.

So if that's true, Paul asks the logical question.

Well, why then was the law given through Moses

430 years after the promise given to Abraham?

And he answers his own question in verse 19.

He says it was added because of transgressions.

Now what does that mean?

Well, based on what Paul writes here,

and in other parts of the New Testament,

particularly the book of Romans,

we know that Paul saw the laws having two important functions.

First of all, it restrained sin among God's people

so that they became distinct among the surrounding nations

of the ancient Near East.

It had a restraining effect.

But in saying that, it's important to note,

Paul affirms over and over again

that the law can only restrain sin.

It cannot justify anybody in God's sight.

It can't say, but it can restrain.

But the second and higher purpose of the law

was to function as a tutor or a teacher

that would show Israel the depth of their sinfulness

and make sure they understand that their only hope

to be redeemed is through something

that God must do for them,

that they cannot be saved by the law.

Specifically to show them that their only hope

is in this promised seed of Abraham,

who they would understand as the Messiah.

That's why they were looking for him

at the time of Christ's birth.

Now Paul was a trained rabbi.

He had great respect for the law.

So in verse 21, he takes a moment to defend it,

and he says, look, the law isn't contrary

to the promises of God.

It's just incomplete.

It can't save.

So he says in effect, look, don't get confused.

There's no conflict between the two covenants

that God has established.

First through Abraham and then through Moses.

Because if the law could save the one given through Moses,

then righteousness would be based on works.

But because salvation is by faith alone,

we have to go back to what God promised to Abraham.

Does that make sense?

Now for our purposes today,

let me reread the key passage.

It's verses 23 to 25.

It says, before faith came,

we were kept in custody under the law.

Notice that term custody.

It's gonna become important in chapter four.

We were kept in custody under the law,

being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed.

Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ

so that we may be justified by faith.

And now that faith has come,

we're no longer under that tutor.

Good?

So he's talking about the Jews.

They were under custody under the law, Paul says,

until the day arrived when the object of God's promise,

who is Christ, was revealed.

And now that Christ has come,

the function of the law as a tutor or teacher

is no longer needed.

In fact, according to Hebrews eight,

in the new covenant found in Christ,

the law gets rendered obsolete.

So what Paul says and what Hebrews eight says

come together in that.

Okay, now turn over to chapter four.

It's all gonna make sense.

Galatians four, verse one,

Paul keeps going with this argument.

Remember the breaks in the chapters are manmade.

They're not inspired.

So Paul's continuing his argument here in verse one.

He says, now I say as long as the heir is a child,

he does not differ at all from a slave,

although he is the owner of everything.

But he's under guardians and managers

until the date set by who?

The father.

And this is obvious.

This is a basic principle of human history,

especially among powerful people and kings even.

When a child comes to the throne of a kingdom,

a child because his father died young, right?

He technically comes to power.

He's technically the rightful heir to the throne

and the ruler of the kingdom.

Therefore he owns everything,

but he's still a child.

And at that point he lacks understanding and wisdom.

So nature puts a limitation on his power.

He's under the supervision of a guardian.

Or in the ancient world they called them regents.

He's under supervision.

Until he comes of age,

he is strictly under control of that overseer,

which in effect puts him on the same functional level

as a slave because he can't just do what he wants.

He has to do what his guardian says.

Until what?

Until a future time when he grows up

and he's able to wield power.

So that's the analogy that Paul is making here.

Now look at verse three.

Paul takes that analogy now

and applies it to his audience who's reading the letter.

Just as in that analogy,

God determines that all mankind would be held like slaves

in custody until a specific time in the future

which God ordains as part of his eternal plan, right?

Verse three.

So also we, while we were children,

were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.

Okay, so what's going on?

Paul says, look, all of mankind has been placed

under a guardianship,

under the elemental things of this world.

For the Jew, that meant the law of Moses.

Restrained sin.

For the Gentile, it would mean a combination

of his conscience plus all of his manmade rituals

and regulations, all primitive things

that might restrain sin but they cannot save.

But as long as we're children,

Paul says we're in custody to those things.

That is until a particular moment comes,

the date that the father has set.

That's what unfolds in verse four.

What is the date that the father has set

for all that to change?

But when the fullness of the time came,

God sent forth his son,

born of a woman, born under the law.

Hapleroma tancranas, the fullness of the time.

A beautiful, it is a beautiful statement in Greek

but basically, plain English, we would say,

well, at the appointed time or at the exact right time,

God moved.

That's when God unleashed his redemptive plan for mankind

by sending forth his son into the world

to fulfill that promise he made to Abraham

way back in the day.

And notice the specific language.

God didn't create a son to go into the world,

he sent his son forth, which means what?

He already existed.

That's really, really important.

He already existed.

It's a very subtle but important statement

about the eternal nature of that child

who's gonna be born in a cattle stall in Bethlehem.

Right?

He already was, at the moment he was sent forth,

having existed in the beginning with God

as the logos or the word.

We know that from John one.

Now that phrase born of a woman in verse four

is not a throwaway phrase, it tells us something else

very important about Jesus.

The word, the fully divine son of God

came into being in the world as any human being would.

Right?

Through the birth process of his mother.

But notice no mention of a father.

Poor Joseph, right?

Guy gets short shrift everywhere.

No Joseph, right?

Why?

Because confirming again that Mary conceived as a virgin

in a supernatural move of the Holy Spirit.

And of course being that she was Israelite by race

and Jewish in her faith,

Mary's son was born under the same custody of the law.

Born of a woman, born under the law.

But look at verse five,

look at the relation that this son has to the law.

Verse five.

So that he might what?

Redeem those who were under,

so he's born under the law but born for this purpose

to redeem those who are also in custody under this law.

For this reason.

That we might receive the adoption as sons.

And because you are sons,

God has sent forth the spirit of a son into our hearts,

crying Abba, father.

And there it is.

You wanna know the ultimate purpose

of Jesus's first coming.

The fulfillment of the promise seed through Abraham.

The redemption of those enslaved

under the elemental things of this world.

That's what it is.

That word redeem in the Greek,

exegorazzo, was used to describe the paying of a ransom.

It was described to,

it describes a price paid

to restore somebody's position in society.

In a practical sense,

it was the normal word used to describe

how slaves were purchased out of the slave market

so they could be set free.

So it's all kinds of amazing meaning

in that particular word.

So God the son was sent forth into the world,

took on flesh in order to pay the ransom

for those who were slaves

to the elemental things of the world.

Whether it was under the Jewish law

or it's under the Gentile conscience

and manmade regulations.

That was the purpose.

And by the way, being purchased out of the world,

being bought as a slave,

would that not be blessing enough for us?

But look at verse, in verse five.

God's love doesn't stop at that.

Not only are we set free,

he says, oh by the way,

you're a son or a daughter.

The father adopts us as his own

and gives us a status that we haven't earned

and a status that we don't deserve.

That's amazing stuff.

And then the whole consummation of that sonship

or daughtership is found in verse seven.

Therefore, you're no longer a slave,

but a son and if a son then an heir through God.

Not only set free,

not only adopted as a son or daughter,

but made an heir to a fortune

that's greater than anything you can imagine.

All things are yours because all things are Christ's

and you are joint heirs with him.

Actually, it's a great restoration.

You are restored to the sonship

that was lost long ago at the fall.

A son of God, a daughter of God.

So that's the argument that Paul makes in Galatians 4.4.

We oftentimes isolate that at Christmas,

which I understand why

because it's a very important statement,

but his argument is very complex

and it gives us the whole purpose of Christmas.

It gives us the whole reason

that we should start to slow down

and prepare our hearts to celebrate

because God has done a great thing, is he not?

Okay, are you still awake out there?

I know that was technical.

Good, TJ, you're awake.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, anytime you wanna shoot up your hand, that's good.

Or shout hallelujah, somebody.

My wife's always good for that.

Okay, so here's where I wanna finish today.

Having said all that, okay,

we talked about the purpose of Advent,

why it's good, why it's something that we should embrace.

We've talked about Galatians 4.4

and the purpose of Christmas.

Now we get to do some history.

And you know what that means?

That means maps.

Of course it means maps.

Pictures and maps.

So, but as we do that,

here's why we're gonna do this today.

We have to ask the question,

if this was the right time

from God's perspective to send Jesus into the world,

well what kind of world was he being born into?

And why does God say that it's the right time?

It's the fullness of the times.

Well, let's think about this for a second.

We know this from our lives today

that the people that govern us

have a major impact on our lives.

Don't they?

I'm talking both nationally and locally.

Their policies affect us.

We feel it every day.

Think about how just the last four years

of the Biden administration affected our lives.

And you might then look forward and say,

well what's this new administration gonna bring, right?

Because we know there's a real impact there.

You and I are affected by our state governor

and by our local city council

and by the DA who gets put into place

in our particular city.

Their policies spill into our lives.

And that was true of the biblical characters

in the Christmas story.

Mary and Joseph and all of them,

they were affected by this, right?

First of all, the laws and regulations coming out of Rome

affected them.

And locally, they were affected by the temperament

of the king of Judea and by the Sanhedrin

who ruled their religious lives.

So the world that Jesus was being born into

was a world of heavyweights,

people with very real power

over the lives of the common people.

So today what I want to do in the time we have left

is give you some of the profiles of those people

so that when next week we get to the nobodies,

you'll understand the historical context

and what they were dealing with.

So let's start with the heaviest of the heavyweights, okay?

Let's talk about this guy.

The Caesar who ruled most of the known world

from 1,400 miles away from Galilee in the city of Rome.

What do we know about Caesar?

Well, the second chapter of Luke's gospel,

by the way, Luke two is our primary text for Christmas.

Luke two begins like this, in those days,

a decree went out from Caesar Augustus

that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.

Now, if you're a history lover like me,

this is a real grace,

that Luke would put this little historical detail

in the text of scripture, and why not?

He's a good historian, right?

He claims to be so.

But he gave us a framework for the story of Christ's birth

based on a guy who's well documented

in history outside of the Bible,

which is a major grace, right?

It helps to corroborate the veracity

of the New Testament scriptures.

It's just one of the tools that God has used to show us,

yeah, everything that's been written in this gospel

is actually historically true, which is a grace, right?

Now, it's safe to say that this guy

was one of the most powerful men

to ever rule any kingdom in all of human history.

And his story is quite remarkable.

I don't know if you've ever read any books on his life,

but it's worth your while.

He has a remarkable story.

Now, his life takes about a 500, 600 page book,

so I have to pick out just a few things

to talk about today.

But the first thing you have to know

is his rise to power makes almost no sense whatsoever

based on the customs and norms of ancient succession.

His coming to power in Rome points to the sovereignty of God.

God had a plan to put the right man in place,

again, 1,400 miles away from the Holy Land in Rome

in order to set his eternal plan in motion.

It makes almost no sense at all,

so let me explain just what I mean by that.

The reign of Augustus, by the way,

anybody know his real name?

Okay, good, Octavius, very good.

Gaius Octavius was his birth name,

and his reign follows the very dictatorial reign

of a man we all know, Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar was the man responsible

for basically dismantling the Roman Republic,

which was more democratic in its ways,

and sets the stage for the coming

of what we call the Roman Empire,

which is ruled by a single man,

beginning with Caesar Augustus, the Roman Empire.

Now, Octavius was Caesar's grand nephew,

which is kind of a weird connection,

but Caesar saw something in this young man early on

that made him declare Octavius to be his heir apparent,

and he adopted Octavius as his son,

giving him this very prominent name,

but also putting a target on his back,

because when you get named to Caesar,

the whole spotlight of the world shifts to you,

and all this could have worked out really well

if Caesar had grown old and handed off the throne

to Octavius, but he was assassinated in the year 44 BC.

How old was Octavius at the time?

Only 19, which made him extremely vulnerable.

He was still being trained as an emperor.

He had absolutely no troops to lead,

and that's a very dangerous place to be

when you are the successor.

There were all kinds of older, experienced generals in Rome

who had very loyal legions that they could sic on you,

and it would have been, honestly, in the ancient world,

the first thing you would do if you wanted to seize power

is you would put Octavius to death,

because he's the named successor, but he's only a teenager,

and you have all these troops,

and the throne is now open to whoever's the strongest.

So by all accounts, if God were not sovereign,

Octavius would have been a dead man.

He just would not have made it,

but Octavius was extremely shrewd

in the way he navigated these political waters,

and I'll make a, honestly, this is a story

that would take hundreds of pages to relay.

To make that long story short,

Octavius formed all the right alliances, very smart.

He secured the loyalty of Julius Caesar's legions

and got them to fight for him,

and over a 12-year period, supported all the right factions,

navigated all the right power dynamics,

and defeated every single rival for the throne,

including the very experienced Mark Antony

and his ally Cleopatra of Egypt.

So amazing story.

So in the year 27 BC, he's now 36,

he becomes the sole master of the vast Roman Empire,

and he rules for 28 years, all the way to his death,

and no Roman emperor will ever come close to Augustus

in terms of success and popularity among the people.

He is a truly remarkable leader.

Now, how did he do that?

Well, he was a master of propaganda

and a master of public perception.

Among the powerful senators of the day,

he went and decided, I'm gonna take the exact opposite tack

that Julius Caesar took.

What Caesar did was he boasted, he was proud,

he was aggressive, and Octavius said,

that didn't work out so well for him

because he got assassinated.

So Octavius resisted titles.

The Senate would try to give him titles,

oh, I'm not worthy of that.

And they would say, well, take these extraordinary powers,

we think you're so gifted.

No, I'm not worthy of it.

So he was constantly giving stuff back

to the very people he wanted to dominate.

Very, very smart.

And so he took the title Princeps.

All I wanna be is the first citizen of Rome,

the first among equals, but that's all,

because I'm just one of, I'm a common man.

Okay, so he's just playing a game,

but he was very good at it.

That's how the title Augustus came about.

It was thrust upon him by the Senate,

and at first he resisted.

No, I don't wanna be called that.

The word means exalted.

So he basically got deified over time

by the Roman Senate, by the citizenry,

because of the level of success

that he brought to Roman society.

So his rise is remarkable.

And again, it can only be explained by God's sovereign hand.

So what did Augustus actually do

that would have impacted Joseph and Mary

and people in Galilee?

Well, overall, the most important thing he accomplished

was the establishment of what historians

called the Pax Romana.

Anybody heard of it?

Some of you guys have taken history, right?

What does it mean?

The Peace of Rome.

Remember, he's coming to power

out of a very chaotic time.

Extremely chaotic.

All kinds of turmoil amongst the leaders of Rome.

Civil wars, Romans fighting Romans.

And so the citizens are just exhausted by all of it.

What they need most is stability.

And Augustus came and he gave them stability.

He started to rebuild and reorganize the Roman state.

He strengthened all the frontier boundaries of the empire.

And at the same time, he said,

you know, we're gonna pull back on aggressive wars

to give the legions a break as well.

So he did all of the right things.

Basically what he did,

he did what so many Americans are crying out for today.

Can we just focus on Rome?

Can we just, you know, make Rome great again?

Really bad, right?

Rome first.

I mean, all of these things that we sort of feel today,

like can we, we're a mess.

Can we just look, can we get some stability here

and start building internally?

Well, that's exactly what Augustus tapped into.

His economic policies were aimed at reducing social unrest

that had marked the Republic in the last 50 years.

He addressed all kinds of economic disparities

that had led to class conflicts

between the common people and the elites.

And so trade and commerce flourished.

Basically the Mediterranean Sea became known

as the Roman Lake because they owned it.

All of the trade and commerce in the area

made Rome very, very wealthy.

Cities began to thrive again.

Cultural achievements reached new heights.

Basically the Pax Romana was a testament

to Augustus's skillful governance,

his ability to bring stability in a very chaotic time.

So Augustus ruled the empire.

He had been ruling for 20 years,

actually a little more than that,

at the time that Christ was sent forth

and took on flesh in Bethlehem, about 20 years.

So Jesus is being born into a world

that in many ways had been stabilized,

which is gonna help the spread of the gospel,

and we'll get to that at the end.

And in God's sovereignty, it's this very famous emperor

who is the one who decrees that we should take a census

of the entire known world, which is kind of strange,

but he was big on taxation.

So he said, you know what,

let's go out to all these places that we run

and let's start taxing the people as we should.

And that's what causes Joseph and Mary

to have to leave Nazareth and travel to their ancestral

homeland, which was Bethlehem of Judea,

which had been prophesied in Micah chapter five, right?

So it had to happen this way,

and God is orchestrating all this.

By the time Augustus dies in the year 14,

Jesus is in his late teens

and is still likely living in Nazareth.

So just to get the timelines right on this.

Now, don't forget, Israel was on the far eastern edge

of the Roman Empire.

It is unlikely that Caesar Augustus had a single moment

to care about Galilee or Judea.

It just wasn't on his radar.

Here's our map.

So if you look at that purple area,

that's the height of the Roman Empire.

It is vast.

It surrounds the entire Mediterranean Sea.

The red dot, of course, is Rome,

and the blue dot is where Judea is.

The only thing that really mattered to Rome about this area

was it was the sliver of land

that connected two much more valuable territories,

Syria in the north and Egypt in the south.

Other than that, to the Romans,

Jews were just crazy people.

Didn't understand their religion,

didn't understand their culture, didn't care.

So it's unlikely that Caesar Augustus

would have known whatsoever.

But before we move on to our other heavyweight,

I want you to catch the divine contrast in this.

One of the most powerful men to ever walk the earth

in a human sense,

a man who would never know the name Jesus of Nazareth,

would never know that name,

would never care to know that name.

At the end of the day, when the history books are written,

the Roman heavyweight becomes a nobody

compared to the god man from Galilee.

And what I love about that story,

it's sort of God's sense of irony,

the juxtaposition of what we think is elite,

what we think is noble,

what we think is wealthy,

compared to what true wealth actually looks like.

The god man is the one who goes down in history

as the most dominant person in the history of mankind.

Amen.

Okay, let's talk about heavyweight number two.

This is Herod the Great.

Did somebody say yay?

No.

Okay, but to me, Herod,

Herod is one of the most fascinating characters in history.

Again, strongly recommend, read some books about this guy.

Not only is he interesting,

but his life really does impact

so much of the New Testament background.

If you've been to Israel,

you know Herod has left a huge imprint on the land,

still to this day.

Half the things you go see in Israel

were built by this man.

And what makes him really interesting

is he is half psychotic, half brilliant.

And I mean that in every way,

which we'll get to in a second.

Now, we don't actually know what Herod the Great looked like.

Unlike Caesar Augustus,

there are absolutely zero portraits of Herod the Great.

Not in statues, not on coins.

Why?

Grave and images.

In Jewish society, you didn't create statues of people

or put even faces on coins.

So we don't know what he looked like.

This just happens to be the actor

in a great movie called The Nativity.

And I just, I thought he played the part so well

and so looked the part that I still use him as my example.

Because you know I have to put pictures on the screen.

Now, the name Herod is all over the New Testament.

47 times you see the name Herod,

but you always have to remember,

how many Herods are there in the Bible?

There's five different,

there's more than five Herods in the family,

but five of them get mentioned in Scripture,

so it can be a little confusing.

But in terms of the birth of Christ,

Herod the Great is the most important person to understand.

In terms of the ministry and the life of Christ as an adult,

it's Herod Antipas, who you need to know about,

but that's for another day.

Now, where does this dynastic family come from?

Well, the Herodian family comes to power

out of the Maccabean period of the intertestamental time.

That era between the old and new,

from Malachi to Matthew, 430 years,

that they rise out of the Maccabean period.

Herod's father was a man named Antipater,

and he was a wealthy noble

who became a loyal friend of Julius Caesar.

In fact, when Julius Caesar campaigned in Egypt

to conquer Egypt, Antipater, Herod's father,

gave him resources and troops to help him in that campaign.

So Herod's family, dating even before him,

had deep connections with Rome.

But they also had to cozy up to the local independent king,

what's known as the Hasmonean king,

in order to sort of live their lives

in that particular region.

But in the year 41 BC, something interesting happens.

The Hasmonean king, who's ruling in Judea,

rises up in rebellion against Rome,

tries to cut themselves off,

and now Antipater is in the middle

of this weird push and pull.

He supported both sides in the past.

He's now got to pick a side.

And who does he choose?

He picks Rome.

Good choice.

He picks Rome in that battle,

and he offers his assistance to the Roman Senate to help.

Now Antipater actually dies soon after that.

He's poisoned.

But his son Herod goes to the Roman Senate and says,

if you give me enough cash and enough troops,

I will put down this rebellion in Judea

and rule as your client king.

And that's exactly what happens.

Rome gives him enough money and troops

to put down this rebellion.

It takes three years, puts down the rebellion,

and at the end of it, he is in control of all of Israel,

and the Roman Senate declares him king of the Jews.

That's how he comes to power.

And Herod is gonna rule then for 33 more years

until the year 4 BC, right up until the time of Christ's birth.

Now, some of you know this about Herod.

He had a real problem

when it came to ruling the Jewish people.

What was it?

They hated him.

Why? That's true.

Because he wasn't Jewish.

So here's the king of the Jews

who wasn't technically Jewish.

He and his father were Edomites.

Remember your biblical history now.

That's from the line of Esau, not from the line of Jacob.

So they're related to the Jews,

but not from the line of promise.

Now the Romans, who don't care about Jewish history,

don't care about the name Edomite,

actually know this group of people as Ijumeans.

They were a group of people who came from the land of Edom,

but then they intermarried with both Jews and other tribes.

So they were sort of a mut race is the best way to explain it.

And that's what Herod was a part of.

During the inter-testamental period,

the Ijumeans were pushed out of their homeland

by the Nabatean tribes.

And eventually they settled just south of Judea.

The blue dot is Jerusalem,

and that area in purple there is Ijumea.

That's where Herod comes from.

He is not Jewish.

He's an Ijumean.

But King Herod publicly identified himself as a Jew

because he wanted to win the favor of his subjects,

which they never actually gave to him.

But he did everything he could.

By the way, there's no evidence

he actually followed Jewish law.

But again, he would say that he was Jewish.

He tried to foster goodwill, tried to win their affection,

but it never worked because they could not accept

his mixed lineage.

Not only was he Edomite on his father's side,

he was Arab on his mother's side.

And they rejected him completely.

What did that cause Herod to do?

Clamp down, become more of a tyrant,

rule with an iron fist,

and the hatred of the people grew against him.

Now, why do I say he was brilliant?

Well, first of all, he ruled for 33 years

in a very chaotic area of the world.

If you rule for 33 years in ancient Israel,

you have done a good job of controlling your environment.

That is a very hard thing to do.

But as I said, he's one of the great visionaries

and builders of the ancient world.

And most of you know this,

but he was the one who expanded

the great temple in Jerusalem, okay,

to look something like this,

even bigger and more glorious than the temple

that Solomon had built a thousand years before.

This was Herod's doing.

In fact, the temple was still being constructed

at the time that Christ was crucified.

It was still being built.

It's a massive project.

Go to Israel, go down below the ground level

and see the foundation stones that Herod put in place.

You will be amazed at what the type of builder that he was.

That's the first thing.

He also built the coastal city of Caesarea

as a Roman city, built it from scratch,

as a Roman city, built an artificial harbor

out of some kind of ancient form of concrete

that historians still don't fully understand,

dropped it in the ocean and created a harbor.

We're talking hundreds of years ahead

of any technology that followed that.

He built Masada.

How many of you guys have been to the top of Masada?

Amazing fortress structure that he built

as his escape plan if he ever had to get away

from a rebellion where he could live for decades

up on this amazing fortress that could not be accessed.

It's an amazing place to be.

Then he built his own summer palace called Herodium

where he went to a mountain and scooped it out,

carved out, scooped out the top of the hill

and built himself a palace in the plains of Bethlehem.

And it's an amazing place to visit.

By the way, this is where he was eventually buried.

His tomb was hidden for thousands of years.

It was discovered in 2007.

They finally found where Herod was buried

right in the middle of that hillside in a secret tomb.

Amazing stuff.

Anyway, so he's a brilliant guy,

but let's talk about his psychosis.

He was as paranoid a king as you will ever find in history.

Probably why he ruled for 33 years.

Because he killed everybody.

Anybody that was a threat, he killed them.

Listen to this record.

During his reign, he put to death 46 members

of the Sanhedrin because they got too powerful.

He married 10 different women during his reign,

murdered at least one, maybe two of his mothers-in-law.

No comment.

He had two of his own sons murdered.

He murdered two of his own flesh and blood

because he believed his spies who whispered in his ear

that his sons would betray him.

Can you imagine?

In the most tragic of all situations,

he had his favorite wife of the 10.

Her name was Miriam.

Had her executed because he, again,

believed a spy that she was cheating on him.

Now Miriam was a beloved member of the kingdom.

She was from the royal line of David.

She was a Hasmonean princess and he executed her.

And then to make up for it,

to make up for it because the public was furious,

he named her brother the High Priest,

which was against everything that the law talks about,

made him High Priest and then just months later

regretted that and had him drowned in his pool

at his summer palace.

This is the type of guy he was.

His paranoia was so bad that Augustus,

Augustus once said, it's better to be Herod's dog

than to be one of his children.

Now here's why I tell you this about this man.

First of all, he's just interesting,

but let me tell you, when you read the story in Matthew 2

of the Magi coming to Judea,

remember they meet with Herod and what do they do?

They say too much, don't they?

They say, we have traveled from the East,

we've traveled this long distance to do what?

To locate the child who is called King of the Jews.

Uh oh.

So does this surprise you based on that track record

that he would be very, very upset

that any wise man from the East would be looking for

a child called King of the Jews?

Obviously not.

Obviously he would be very, very upset about it

and we'll get to that story later in the series.

And it's interesting, scholars for years

have tried to deny the slaughter of the infants

later in Matthew 2 because Herod sets out

to kill all the babies two years and under in Bethlehem

because he knows, he finds out the prophecy of Micah 5

that that's where the child's gonna be born.

He slaughters the infants.

Well, scholars don't like that story

because A, it's extremely dark, but B, they say,

well, there's no corroboration of that story

outside of the Bible.

But again, look at the man's track record.

Is there any doubt that he would do something like that

in order to preserve his own power?

Clearly, he would.

Now, history does tell us that he died in the year 4 BC

after a long and painful illness.

I'm okay with that.

But of course, by that time, Mary and Joseph

had fled to Egypt, right, with their baby to get away

and then they're told by an angel

that Herod has passed away so they can return.

And so from that point forward,

then Jesus is raised in Nazareth

and he's raised in Nazareth in this interesting atmosphere,

this milieu of tight Roman control on his life

and also the irreligious dysfunction of the Herodian family.

And that's what he grows up in.

Which may cause you to ask the question,

and I'll end with this, well then why, Lord,

based on these crazy people,

why would you send your son into the world at this time?

I'm gonna give you a brief list and we'll do this quickly.

How we doing on time, Grant?

Good.

Okay, if you look at this from a purely strategic perspective

on the timing of Christ's birth,

I'm gonna give you seven reasons why it makes sense.

The first, whoop, here's Herod again.

The first is he comes after the exile

and after the purge of idolatry in Israel.

You have to understand this.

When Israel is sent into exile in Babylon,

it cures them of their idolatry problem

and that needed to happen.

So at the very least, what you could say about the Jews

at the time of Jesus's birth

was they were focused on Yahweh once again

and looking for the Messiah.

Although very skewed in their understanding

of what form he would take, right?

We know that as well.

But being post-exilic was very, very important.

Second, at this point in history,

the Old Testament canon has been established

for more than 400 years.

So there are no doubts.

Nobody's out there going, well, is that scripture?

Is this scripture?

There is no doubt about God's promise of sending a redeemer

and for those who were paying attention,

they were actually watching for the Messiah

because the canon was set.

The third thing which is very interesting

is the synagogue had been established by this point.

Look at your Old Testament.

You're not gonna find synagogues.

Have you noticed this?

Because they developed later on.

They developed during the intertestamental period.

And so now you have these smaller structures,

these smaller communities for Torah study and for worship.

And this becomes very important.

By the time Jesus is doing his adult ministry,

there are synagogues all over Israel

and spread into the Gentile world.

Where does Paul always go to when he visits a new city

in the Greek world?

To the synagogue.

All the places that Jews were scattered,

synagogues had popped up.

And that is going to assist in the spread of the gospel.

That's number three.

Fourth, and we touched on this already,

the global reach and power and stability of Rome

had a huge impact on the establishment of the gospel

in the Greek world and the spread of the gospel.

Again, Israel has united east and west together

across this vast region.

So now there is a common culture

everywhere missionaries go.

Very important.

The world is a safer place to travel in

because the control that Rome has over it.

The roads that Augustus builds all throughout his empire

facilitate cultural exchange that didn't happen

before he came to power.

And of course, missionaries like Paul

are going to use all of those routes and roads

in order to spread the gospel.

That's very important.

Number five, and we'll give this one to Alexander the Great.

In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great

swept through this whole region before Rome came to power

and he Hellenized everything he touched.

And because of his reign at that time,

the Greek, Koine Greek language is established

as the common language of the day.

We call it the language of commerce.

Just sort of like English today.

If you're going to do trade in the world internationally,

you just have to speak English.

And the same thing was true of Greek in that day.

That's because of Alexander.

So diverse nations and people groups and regions

could now be communicated with because everybody spoke Greek.

Very important.

Number six, at this point, the Hebrew Old Testament

has been translated into Greek.

That happened around the year 250 BC.

We call it the Septuagint.

So the Hebrew Old Testament was now translated and being

disseminated in the common language of the day.

Very, very important.

So now imagine somebody in Rome or somebody in Asia Minor,

somebody in Greece could actually read about Yahweh

and about the history of Israel and the promise of a Messiah.

And that is going to help with the spread of the gospel

as well.

And finally, the last reason has to do

with the moral and religious climate of that day.

Listen, the Roman Empire was built

on a whole bunch of things and they weren't pretty.

Decadence and gluttony and blood sport and violence

and sexual debauchery, all these things.

And even though they talked about Roman religion, right,

which was this weird pantheon of old gods

and the cult of the emperor, none of that

satisfied the people.

So at this point in history, there

is a great spiritual emptiness and a void

that is longing to be filled by the good news of the gospel,

by things like compassion and peace and joy and love

and, of course, hope, especially among the common people.

So there's just seven and we could go on and on with this,

but this is why God says, in the fullness of the times,

the fullness at the right time, I sent forth my Son.

So I'm going to have you pray in just a second,

but that sets the context for what's coming over

the next three Sundays.

Guys, let's start taking a deep breath

as I rush through this message.

Take a deep breath and slow down and begin

to prepare your hearts to celebrate

the coming of our Savior.

Amen.