Sermon Xtra - Fullness of Time
From time to time, we will provide an extra teaching or insight into a previous week's text that either did not apply to the over-all thrust of a sermon or we did not have time to cover. Hopefully these Sermon Extras will help clarify possible questions raised when reading a text that we do not answer in a weekend sermon.
THE FULLNESS OF TIME
This little phrase from Galatians 4:4 peaks the curiosity in that it seems like a loaded and important phrase...but many have wondered about the exact nature of its meaning. From the perspective of God's sovereignty in his plans and purposes, the most obvious meaning should be taken--that this was simply the exact time in History in which God had planned all along to send our Redeemer into the world as the ultimate missionary. Truly, this is a sufficient meaning for what Paul is saying.
But we must also understand that God does not act as if history and human events do not matter. Therefore, it is sometimes helpful to see things from the human perspective of world events and therefore, the practical nature of why God the Son was sent into the world at the very time which the Bible calls "the fullness of time". Most scholars agree that the following list represents the perfect/ideal conditions for the Messiah to have come into the world to fulfill all prophecy regarding His mission:
- Rome had conquered and subdued the known, inhabited earth. Rarely has there been a time in history where so much of the earth fell under so few rulers. This also gave a level of peace and structure to society that was like gasoline on fire for the spreading of the Gospel.
- The construction of the Roman road system made the ease and safety of travel to various parts of the known world advantageous to the spread of anything. In modern terms, the difference between previous travel and travel under the Roman road system is equivalent to the difference between the ease and efficiency of the pony express and email.
- The Greek language and Hellenistic culture had brought about a cohesion in society unknown to that time. We consider the way in which the internet and modern communication makes our world so much smaller and the world is so much more homogeneous (in terms of familiarity w/ popular culture, for example) and we can see the communication advantages of a shared cultural and language experience that existed in the 1st century.
- Religiously, Greek and Roman gods had lost their hold on people and had been found wanting. The Law of Moses (and maybe more important, the role of the Jews in history) had not only run its course from the perspective of God, but seemed to have done so by any objective, 1st century observer.
Each of these conditions provided the ideal conditions for what Paul would label "the fullness of time".
