Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from Galatians chapter
4. And the title of the message
is, The Fullness of the Time. The Fullness of the Time. And
I'm taking that title from verse 4 of chapter 4, where it says,
But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth
His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, and then we'll
go on from there. But I'm going to back up a little
bit into chapter three. I've preached on these verses
before, but just to give you some context here. The Apostle
Paul here has been inspired by the Holy Spirit to show the great
contrast between the Old Covenant law, what is known as the Old
Testament, the Old Covenant law, the law of Moses, the law given
to the Hebrew children on Mount Sinai, which included not only
the Ten Commandments. You know, when you think of the
law, a lot of people focus on the Ten Commandments, and that
was the basic centrality of the law, but it wasn't the only thing
the law said. There was the moral law, which
is embodied in the Ten Commandments, And then there was the ceremonial
law, which was the law, you can read about that in the book of
Exodus, and mainly in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus being
the tribe of Levi, which were the priestly tribe. And that
part of the law, the ceremonial part, had to do with the priesthood,
the sacrifice of, the blood sacrifice of animals, the altar, the tabernacle,
which later became the temple. And what that was, it was all
of that in the ceremonial law was a picture. You may have heard
the term a type, Hebrew typology. These were types of God's way
of salvation by his grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ,
by whose blood, the sacrifice of Christ, the sins of God's
chosen people. And that included both Jew and
Gentile, and we'll see that as we go back up to chapter three
here. Now the old covenant law was just for the Jewish people,
the nation of Israel. And if any Gentiles came in under
that law, they had to be brought into the nation Israel. The men
by circumcision, the women following, and they were basically, as seen
by the Jews, they were basically second-class citizens, but that
wasn't the right way for the Jews to see it. But anyway, salvation,
God's chosen people, chosen before the foundation of the world,
in and by the Lord Jesus Christ, includes a remnant of grace chosen
out of Israel, the Jews, national Jews, and the Gentiles. And so
they're all brought together in Christ. But under that old
covenant law that Paul's showing here that has been abolished
now by way of fulfillment, there were pictures and types of Christ. But there was the moral law,
the Ten Commandments. There was the ceremonial law,
the priesthood, the sacrifices, the tabernacle, the worship,
all of that, all the elements of the tabernacle. There was
the civil law that governed their daily life. and there were dietary
laws, all kinds of things like that. There were cleansing laws,
things like that. I think some people have estimated
that there's somewhere around over 600 individual laws. But that law was given to Israel
through Moses not to be a way of salvation. It was given to
show them their sinfulness and their depravity, and their need
of salvation by another way, the grace of God, through the
blood and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, His glorious
person. See that tabernacle? That was
a picture of the glorious person of Christ. He is God, manifest
in the flesh. And it was also a type of how
God saves sinners through the blood sacrifice of the lamb and
the bullocks that were sacrificed on the altar, the brazen altar.
You remember when they came into the court, the outer court. of
the tabernacle, there was first a brazen altar, brass altar,
and the sacrifice was killed and the blood was poured in a
basin and the sacrifice was burned on that brazen altar and the
blood was taken by the high priest into the holy place and in the
holy place that was the general place that only the priest of
Levi could go in And you had the table of showbread there,
you had the altar of incense, the candlestick, golden candlestick,
and all that represented certain aspects of salvation. And then the high priest, one
time a year on the Day of Atonement, would take the blood and go into
the holiest of all. Now, only the high priest who
was a descendant of Moses' brother, Aaron, could go into that holiest
of all, the Holy of Holies. And in there, you remember, you
had the Ark of the Covenant overlaid with the mercy seat, and he would
sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. And all of that, again,
was a picture of Christ. Well, when Christ came into the
world to do His work, and that's what we're going to talk about
here in Galatians 4, all of that was abolished by way of fulfillment. We no longer need that covenant,
that old covenant, under which Israel failed. But they were
meant to fail under that because we're sinners. Somebody says,
well, if I'd have been there, I would have done, but no, you
wouldn't have. You would have failed too because you're a sinner.
And somebody says, well, and the Jews, the Israelites, they
traced their lineage back to Abraham and they would say they're
Abraham's seed. But now God made a promise to
Abraham some 400 years before that law was given to the Hebrew
children by Moses. And the promise given to Abraham
was a promise of salvation by grace, not by works, not by law. And it was a promise of salvation
by God's grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you'll
look back at chapter three, in verse 26, And verse 25 speaks about when
Christ comes, you're no longer under that schoolmaster of the
old covenant law, that's gone. And he says in verse 26 of chapter
three, for you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And that includes both Jew and
Gentile. Any Jew who is brought to faith
in Christ, any Gentile who is brought to faith in Christ, gives
evidence of being a child of God, an adopted son or daughter
of God, adopted into His family by divine electing grace. God
chose you before the foundation of the world and adopted you
into His family based upon the future work of the Lord Jesus
Christ, because we're accepted in the Beloved. And when God
brings us to faith in Christ, by His power and goodness, the
gift of faith doesn't come from us. It doesn't come from our
being better than others. But it's the gift of God. For
by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves.
It's the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.
So when God brings a sinner to faith in Christ, And that's Christ
as He is identified and distinguished in the Word of God, the Gospel,
as the righteousness of God, His righteousness imputed, charged,
accounted. The one who died by His one offering,
you see, He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. So
when God brings a sinner to believe in that Christ, that specific
person and that specific work, That person then gives evidence
of having been adopted into his family by his grace before the
foundation of the world and being redeemed by the blood of Christ.
And so look at verse 27 of chapter three, for as many of you as
have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Now I mentioned
this last time, how this word baptized here does not refer
to the ordinance, the New Testament ordinance of believer's baptism. Now the Bible does teach in the
New Testament that all who have been brought to faith in Christ
are to confess their salvation by God's grace through Christ
in believer's baptism. And that's not sprinkling babies,
because babies don't believe. All right, that's not pouring
water over their head, or your head, or sprinkling adults. It's baptism in water, which
is by immersion. And it pictures our unity and
our identification in the death of Christ, the burial of Christ,
and the resurrection of Christ. Now that's what believer's baptism
is. Now if you haven't been baptized
in water, You haven't been baptized at all. And if you were baptized
when you didn't believe in the Christ of the Bible, the gospel,
you weren't baptized either. Because it's a confession. Baptism
doesn't save you. Believer's baptism. Believer's
baptism does not wash away your sins. And that's not where God
applies the blood of Christ, as some denominations say. It's
a picture and a confession that your sins have already been taken
away, washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ. But now the
word baptized is used in different context. And here it's not talking
about the ordinance of believer's baptism, which is by the command
of Christ. Here it's talking about a believer's
union with Christ. Placed into is what it literally
means. He says, for as many of you as
have been placed into Christ, united to Christ, all right? When were we united to Christ?
Well, if you're one of God's children, one of God's sheep,
Christ's sheep, one of His elect, you were placed into Christ when
you were chosen before the world began and given to Him. He was
made your representative, your surety, and He was purposed to
be your substitute and Redeemer. And then you were placed into
Christ at the cross when He justly died for the sins of His sheep.
Now, if you've been placed into Christ, baptized into Christ,
that means you've put Him on. Now, when do you put Him on?
When God brings you to faith in Him. It's like wearing Him
like a garment. Now, that's not a literal thing. It's not something that you just
say, well, it's on my outside, but not on my inside or anything
like that. You put Him on by God-given faith
in your heart. You believe in Him. You rest
in Him. You plead His righteousness as
your only ground of salvation. That's what it is to put on Christ.
Now verse 28 of chapter 3 says, there in Christ, for those who
have believed in Him, There's neither Jew nor Greek, that means
Gentile. There's neither bond nor free.
There's neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus. There's a unity there, an equality
there that provides the ground of salvation and hope that brings
a sinner from being one who deserves nothing but condemnation and
death to one who is accepted before God. in the beloved, in
Christ. You're all one. And he says in
verse 29, and if you be Christ, and that's a possessive here,
you can read it this way, if you belong to Christ, then are
you Abraham's seed, Abraham's offspring. Now, Abraham is sometimes
called the father of the faithful. It's not because he has the same
position as what we would refer to as God our father, God, our
Father, speaks of the deity of God and speaks to the fact that
we are here by creation. If we're in Christ, we're here
by grace. He's the originator, the source of all salvation.
And Abraham is not that. But Abraham is what we call an
archetype. Now, what does that mean? Well,
that means Abraham is a prime example of how God saves sinners,
by grace. And so when he says, if you belong
to Christ, then are you Abraham's seed, you're Abraham's spiritual
offspring, in the sense that Abraham is the archetype. You
were saved the same way that Abraham was saved, by grace,
not by works. And one of Paul's points earlier
on in Galatians 3, that if you claim that Abraham is your father
spiritually, but you're seeking salvation by the works of the
law, then you're denying any connection with Abraham because
Abraham was not saved that way. Abraham was saved by grace. You
can read about that in Romans chapter four. So he says, then
are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What
promise? The promise of salvation with
all of its benefits and blessings conditioned on Christ and given
to his people freely and fully. by him. So now we go to chapter
four. Now verse one says, now I say
that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing
from a servant, though he be Lord of all. It's kind of like
if you're in a family and you're the heir of the wealth of that
family. As you're growing up and being
taught, being nurtured, you're no different than a servant because
you don't have any claim or any authority as far as your own
person. But he says in verse 2, you're
under tutors, teachers, and governors until the time appointed of the
Father. When you grow up and the father,
your father, determines that it's time now for you to accept
responsibility, to be an adult, all of that. So verse three,
now he's talking to the Jews here who claim to be believers
now. He's not talking about Jews who
denied the gospel, denied Christ. But those who claim to be believers,
he said, even so, when we were children, were in bondage under
the elements of the world. The elements of the world means
those physical elements of the law. In other words, when the
nation Israel was under the old covenant law, They were responsible
to keep those commandments. For example, the ceremonial law.
They had to worship at the tabernacle. The priest had to slay an actual
animal, an innocent lamb or a bullock. And he had to take the blood,
the physical blood of that animal and take it into, they were under
those physical elements. They were under the dietary laws
to eat certain things and not eat certain things. All of that,
see? But he says in verse four, now
look at verse four. But when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made
under the law. Now the fullness of the time,
that's the title of the message. What is that? In the Bible, when
it speaks of the time is full, it's talking about the time that
God had appointed for a specific act or deed what God purposed
before time and what he was going to complete in time when it was
time for that event to take place that's called the fullness of
the time. So God appointed a time for all
things Ecclesiastes 3 talks about that. There is a season and a
time for every purpose. God appointed that. Our times
are in God's hands. Well, before the foundation of
the world, God appointed a time that He was going to deliver
the Hebrew children from Egypt by Moses, His servant, and give
them the law and institute that law, forming them as a nation
and giving them the promised land. And he appointed the time
period that they were going to last. It was about 1,500 years,
1,500 years from the time that God gave the law to Moses, Hebrew,
to the children through Moses until the time of Christ. And
in the fullness of the time, that was the time that God sent
forth His Son, the Messiah, the Savior, Christ, the Son of God,
who would become incarnate. Christ, the second person of
the triune Godhead, the Son, equal with the Father and the
Spirit in every attribute of deity. And there was a time and
God appointed that time. And when that time was full,
here he comes, verse four. But when the fullness of the
time was come, now here's what happened. God sent forth his
son, sent him into the world. Now, how did he do it? Look at
the next line, made of a woman. Well, that speaks of his incarnation. You see Christ, united Himself
in His deity with a perfect, sinless humanity created for
Him in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. That's
called the incarnation. God was made flesh and dwelt
among us. Now He didn't change into a man
and man didn't change into a God. He was simply made God and man
in one purpose. And let me tell you something,
that is a mind-boggling concept. It's hard for us to grasp and
wrap our minds around, but that's the only way to put it. There
was no mixture of deity and humanity in Christ. There was simply the
union of the two natures, deity and humanity, without sin. The
old writers called it the hypostatic union of Christ. So there was
no mix-up within His person. God sent forth His Son, that's
His deity, made of a woman. The Word made flesh. God manifests
in the flesh. That's His name. And so He was
made of a woman. But then look at the next line.
In the fullness of the time, God sent forth His Son to become
incarnate You see, Christ had to be both God and man in one
person in order to save His people from their sins. He's God. And what is the penalty for the
sins of His people imputed to Him? Death. But God cannot die. You can't kill God. God is eternal. God is life. And He cannot be
killed. Well, man cannot create life
or give life. But Jesus Christ is both God
and man. And as God-man, he offered himself
without spot for the sins of his people imputed to him. And
he died on that cross. So he was made of a woman. And
then it says he was made under the law. What law was he made
under? Whatever law that God has at
any given time. summarized and love God perfectly
and love your neighbors yourself. And so made under law means that
what? That the salvation of His people,
the elect, given to Him before the foundation of the world was
all laid upon Him. He became responsible, accountable,
to keep the law and satisfy its justice for his people. So he was made under the law.
He told them, he said, I didn't come to break the law, but I
came to keep every jot and tittle of that law. And that included
his death. He was obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross. And look at the next line in
verse five, in the fullness of the time, What happened to Christ
on this earth? He said to redeem them that were
under the law. He had to redeem his people.
And there was a time, the fullness of the time that was given for
him to do that. You remember in his earthly ministry,
when he began his earthly ministry, when he was about 30 years old,
at his baptism, He told John, suffer it to be so that we might
fulfill all righteousness. How's he going to fulfill all
righteousness? By his death, burial and resurrection
for the sins of his people. And he kept telling his disciples,
it's not time yet for me to go to Jerusalem and die, be arrested
and die. But there was a time. And when
that time came, he went to Jerusalem, he was arrested, he was tried,
unjustly accused by man. but he was put on that cross
and murdered by mankind, the way I put it, but it was all
the work of God. It was all appointed by God.
It was the fullness of the time. And he says, verse five, to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption
of sons. Now, how do we receive the adoption
of sons? Well, if I'm a child of God,
a son of God, if you're a daughter of God, God chose you before
the world began. And God sent Christ into the
world to pay the price, the sin debt that would condemn you if
it weren't for God's grace and His unconditional love. And in
that transaction, He secured the fact that the Holy Spirit
would come and give you life from the dead. And look at what
He says, verse six. And because you are sons, God
has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba, Father. Now that's when you receive the
adoption of sons. What God did before the foundation
of the world, He brought you to receive it as you believe
in Christ. The adoption of sons, I'm a child
of God. John chapter one, verses 12 and
13 talks about those who were born of God, not by the works
of the flesh, not by blood, not by human descent, not by works of the flesh and
not by the will of man, but of God. And he said, those are the
ones in verse 12, he said, who have the right, that word power
in verse 12 of John one is not ability, it's the right to become
the sons of God. What right do I have to call
myself a child of God? The only one is that I believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ and I rest in him for all salvation,
for all forgiveness, for all righteousness, for all grace
and glory, all of it. And what do we do? We cry, Abba,
Father. What is Abba, Father? That's
that special familial relationship between God and His children
based upon the blood of Christ, His righteousness imputed alone.
And all took place in the fullness of the time that God had appointed
for his people to be saved by his grace through Christ. They're not under the law, they're
under grace, the scripture says. That's the issue. Hope you'll
join us next week for another message from God's word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.