Christmas Messages 3
Bob Marcaurelle
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle printed and audio messages
HOW GOD PREPARED THE WORLD FOR JESUS
HISTORICALLY
“In the fullness of time God sent His Son, born of woman, born under the Law.” (Galatians 4:4)
The drama of Christmas includes far more than the story of the birth at Bethlehem. It began back in the unending recesses of eternity past and It reaches forward into the unending recesses of eternity future when God and His redeemed people will live together in unbroken harmony and purity forever (Eph. 1:10).
In between these two eternities we have this little island we call time or history and from our test we shall look at the part it plays in the drama of Christmas. As parents make preparations for the birth of a child, so did God make preparations for the birth of His Son.
Paul says, When the time was right, Jesus came. The literal translation of the “fullness” is “when the full number of days had arrived.” The years were like drops falling in a cup and the moment of overflow was the birth of Jesus Christ.
History is not like some runaway locomotive which the engineer started and then left to itself; it is controlled by the hands of God.
PATIENCE
The remarkable thing about God is that He never hurries. Like a master craftsman He carefully places each piece in place at just the right time.
A few years ago I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and beheld the marvelous work of our God. In the gift shop I brought a little book, “The Bible Creation Story and the Grand Canyon.” In it the author said the Grand Canyon is the only place in the world where we can read in the rocks the five chapters in the history of the earth. Geologists estimate that it took 4-6 million years for the Colorado River to cut its way to the floor of that canyon. These years, if true, testify to the patience of God.
What patience there was for God to wait tens of thousands of years before calling Abraham from the land of Ur to make from him the Jewish nation.
And then for two thousand years, from Abraham to Christ, God patiently worked with the Jews until they were ready to deliver the Messiah to the world.
Charles Spurgeon says,
“If we were wise enough we should see that the church of God could not have endured gospel light earlier than the day of Christ’s coming; neither would it have been well to keep her in gloom beyond that time ... God alone knows the times and seasons for a church, and no doubt to Him the four thousand years of the Old Dispensation made up a fit period for the church to abide at school.”
PURPOSE
God is not just patiently working. He is purposefully working. He is carrying out in time that which He planned in eternity. He is not just driving the locomotive; He is driving it to the predetermined destination.
God can be patient because He is never worried. He is not searching the tracks ahead for unforeseen dangers. He knows the end from the beginning. He can see all the way to the end of the line. Adrian Rogers said, “Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurred to God?
PREPARATION
1. Geographical Preparation
At creation, when God brought forth the mountains and the seas and places the land as He desired he put Palestine in the perfect place. One forth the size of Florida, it is a tiny spec on the map, a narrow strip of land 50 miles wide and 100 miles long.
This all seems insignificant on the grand scheme of things but if you look at a map and find this tiny spec your will see it is a little land bridge that connects three continents – Europe (NW), Asia (N) and Africa (S).
It sits on the Eastern shore of the Med. Sea; the Inter-State Highway of the ancient world, where at any time a hundred ships were carrying goods from Africa to Europe and Asia.
Down the shoreline on the West is the highway by the sea where Caravans traveled 2000 years before Christ. Down the Eastern border, in the Jordan valley is what some call the oldest road in the world, it too carrying merchants and soldiers for thousands of years before Christ.
And in the center from North to South are the central mountains with the little village of Nazareth in the north. From this vicinity Jesus could walk a few miles and look down on the two ancient highways of either side, and on the great Sea that tied the world together. Growing up, the world passed by at His feet.
There was no better spot GEOGRAPHICALLY for a Savior of the world, a Man for all men, to grow up than in these mountains. Whether it took God a split second or 7 billion years to created and fashion our planet, He molded it so His Son could live and die at the crossroads of the ancient world
And think about today. The Bible describes the last conflict between good and evil before the end of time, as the nations gathering to “Har-mageddon” (The mountain of Megiddo). Megiddo is huge valley named where the greatest battle of the ancient world and even in World War II took place. It is just west of Nazareth between it and the Med. Sea. Many times the young son of God looked out over its vast expanse.
Revelation says at Armageddon all the nations of the world will surround the people of God for the final conflict before the end. That is taking place right now.
All eyes are on the Middle East. To the NE is Korea; to the North, Russia; to the west, Europe and all the way to America. How here is an amazing thing.
If we look to the East at all this we go over the Med. Sea to the Plain of Megiddo. We go over the tiny village of Nazareth. We go over to Iraq, the traditional cite of Babylon. The monster of Iraq, now dead, was Saddam Hussein, another in the long line of Anti-Christs whose birthplace is the city of Tekrit.
Guess what - to many Arabic people Tekrit is the site of the Garden of Eden. We are right back where it all began.
If someone had said 200 years ago that all the nations of the world would have its eyes and interests on the desolate looking land of Iraq and Iran; they would have been considered insane. But we know why we look there.
Billions of years ago God put oil under that ugly looking land. (Tell me God does not have a sense of humor.) This world, in the First Century, and today, was shaped by the creative hand of God, to be poised and ready for His Son to come. The time was also right:
2. Historical Preparation
It would not be an exaggeration to say that history, down to this very hour, is indebted mainly to three cultures. Three streams from ancient history have merged to form the western culture we enjoy today.
From the Jews we learned to worship, from the Romans we learned to govern, and from the Greeks we learned to educate. Our bodies have been molded by Rome, our spirits by Palestine, and our minds by Greece.
PERSIA
At the close of the OT Persia ruled the world. Its religion was Zoroastrianism which, unlike the OT, had a detailed view of the afterlife, with wonderful blessings and horrible punishments. The OT is strangely silent about the afterlife. It says almost nothing of heaven or hell. It was not that way in Persia.. The NT term “Paradise” was the Persian word for “garden”.
GREECE
Three hundred and fifty years before Christ, Phillip of Macedon had a son named Alexander. At that boy’s heart lived the dream of world conquest and when he grew to manhood he clenched his fist and squeezed the whole world together culturally. In twelve short years he conquered the earth.
And everywhere he went he took Greek culture. The world became one huge neighborhood. It was Greek in its art, in its instructions, in its drama, in its thought and most of all in its language.
He gave the world a universal language. Koine (Common) Greek became the universal language of the land. And so, when Christ was born, the missionaries of the cross could travel from the shores of Britain, through the highlands of Asia, across the wild Arabian desert and down into Egypt and Africa and preach the gospel in a language universally understood.
The Greeks gave us a love of wisdom and learning. gave us an educational system that was unsurpassed until the eighteenth century. They gave us the formal “science” of Philosophy. God used Greece to shape the minds of men so that they were dissatisfied with the meaning of life and were hungry for the truth. This is why the philosopher in Athens were eager to have Paul, a traveling Jewish rabbi, fill their pulpit in Athens (Acts 17)
ROME
About the time of Alexander’s rise to power, God was working in the West in a strange little peninsula shaped like a boot. One city, named Roma, began to stir. Its proud people were brave and disciplined and warlike and it was not long until they had conquered all of Italy.
They began to march to Europe, to Asia, to Africa and no one could stop them. They took over the conquests of Alexander and finished the job and made the world of Jesus’ day a huge neighborhood.
They brought PEACE to the earth. Soldiers patrolled the roads and stood firm at every border. If Christ had been born a hundred years earlier or later, His gospel would have been stopped on the high seas by pirates and warships and on the land by hostile nations, robbers and closed borders.
They built ROADS to bind the world together and built them so well that some are traveled to this very day. Little did they know that they were building God’s highways over which His herald could travel speedily and unmolested.
When Caesar Augustus issued his decree that all the world should be taxed, he set a world in motion. What did he care that a young Jewish girl, in her ninth month of pregnancy, had to travel through mountain terrain to Bethlehem endangering both her and her baby?
But behind Caesar was Micah the prophet who had decreed hundreds of years before that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).
And behind Micah was God, the God who is working out His purpose in the earth. History is His Story. When the time was right, Jesus came.
ISRAEL
As God’s chosen race, they were chosen to suffer. We must never forget that it was out of the agony and tears and blood of the Jewish people that the Christ was born.
The Northern Kingdom, Israel was wiped from the face of the earth by the Assyrians (Syria and Iraq) in 722 BC but God spared tiny Judah because she would give was destined by Him to give us His Son.
Judah almost died in 586 when Babylon came but God spared her a second time.
Babylonian armies sacked the holy city of Jerusalem, reduced it and the Temple to piles of rubbish and carried her best people into exile. At this time Jews by the thousands began to settle all over the world.
Cyrus the Persian (Iran) was led by God to allow all in Persia to go home. Most did and when they returned they were a changed people. They were committed to the worship of one God. Never again would they bow before any idol.
The first Century world was sick and tired of hundreds of gods who were either grotesque of plagued with human weaknesses. The Christian message of one and only one God was like a breath f fresh air.
Everywhere they went they carried the HOLY SCRIPTURES. Under the influence of men like Ezra, the Books of the Old Testament were gathered together and preserved.
Between Malachi and Matthew they produced a Greek translation called the Septuagint. And thus when Jesus was born, the world had a Bible. Everywhere His heralds went they could open the Word of God and preach. When the time was right Jesus came.
The Jews who were scattered built SYNAGOGUES- meeting places for education, religious instruction and worship. Everywhere you found as many as ten Jews you find a synagogue.
There the Bible was read and preached and taught. There the hymns of the Old Testament were sung.
And these thousands upon thousands of synagogues, dotting the earth, became the preaching stations of the heralds of the cross. When the time was right, Jesus came.
