The Perfect Timing of God: Lessons from History, Faith, and Life
- Ashland Church of Christ
- Dec 16, 2024
- 19 min read
Guest Pastor J Cook
December 15, 2024
God's Timing: An Intricate Plan Through History
Throughout the ancient world, God's timing proved to be both deliberate and profound. Early Christians faced incredible persecution, often refusing to deny their faith, choosing martyrdom instead of compromise. For a time, exemptions were offered to the Jewish people under Roman rule due to their steadfastness, and Christianity, born from Judaism, was afforded a brief reprieve.
The arrival of Jesus Christ occurred at what historians call the fullness of time. Political stability under Caesar Augustus, cultural unity brought by Greek influence, and practical advancements such as Roman roads all worked in harmony to enable the spread of the Gospel. Roads built precisely to accommodate chariots—4 feet, 8.5 inches wide—became pathways for missionaries like Paul and Barnabas to carry the good news to far-reaching places.
The Role of Alexander the Great and Greek Influence
Before Christ's birth, Alexander the Great's conquests spread Greek culture and language across the known world. This unification allowed the Gospel to spread more rapidly, as Greek became a universal tongue of trade, education, and communication. The Greek philosophers—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—had sown seeds of curiosity, questioning life’s meaning. This cultural backdrop paved the way for Jesus and His followers to plant the seeds of eternal truth.
God’s Perfect Sign: A Star and a Savior
Even the heavens participated in God's grand design. The Magi, stargazers from the east, saw a brilliant star—a sign of Christ's birth. God, in His infinite wisdom, set that light in motion centuries before it reached earth. At just the right moment, it illuminated the path for those seeking the Savior.
Lessons in Difficult Circumstances
Life's challenges often serve a greater purpose, even when we fail to understand them in the moment. The story of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, illustrates this truth. Despite betrayal, suffering, and imprisonment, God used Joseph's circumstances to save lives during a famine. Joseph's words resonate deeply: "You intended to harm me, but God meant it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."
Just as Joseph trusted God's greater plan, we, too, must surrender to God's will, even amid hardships.
Finding Faith Through Life's Seasons
The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us: "For everything, there is a season, and a time for every activity under heaven. "Seasons of grief, war, loss, and pain are unavoidable, but even these serve a purpose. God works through both the good and the bad, weaving His perfect plan in our lives. When prayers are answered positively, we say, “God is so good.” But what about when life doesn’t go as we hope—when tragedy strikes, marriages fall apart, or jobs are lost?
God's goodness remains constant. Like Mary, a young girl facing ridicule and uncertainty, we must trust that God can bring glory from difficult circumstances.
Surrendering to God's Plan
In life, we make choices—some wise, some regrettable. Yet, as Proverbs 16:9 tells us: "We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. "God uses both our successes and failures for His purposes. Even when we cannot see the way forward, He calls us to trust in His sovereign will.
Conclusion: A Call to Trust
As we reflect on the Christmas story and the challenges in our lives, we are reminded of God's perfect timing. Whether through Roman roads, a star in the sky, or a young girl named Mary, God orchestrates every detail. Life’s trials may seem overwhelming, but even in those seasons, His hand remains steady, and His plan remains good.
May we learn to trust Him in every season, knowing that His timing is always perfect.
"Let’s pray..."(Closing prayer encouraging gratitude, trust, and surrender to God’s plan in our lives).
Listen
Watch
Read
Click to expand the transcribed notes.
Transcribed by Turbo Scribe
I'm going to give you a Christmas preliminary. I'd also like to take this moment before I begin the sermon I'd like to introduce you to my friend Jerry Scott who is a worthless shipless buff. Pardon me? That's why I like him.
Anyway, the story is told of a woman that decided that she was going to go on a vacation alone. She didn't want her husband anywhere around. She makes it over to London and calls her husband on the phone.
And she asks, how are things over there? He said, well, things are going alright for me, but it's not going to be good for Daisy, our cat. She died. She started blubbering and carrying on because she couldn't believe that he was so insensitive to his time.
He knew that she had half of the vacation to go and now she was going to be preoccupied with the news of Daisy dying. So she said, you are worthless. You never did care for my thoughts.
You're always doing things on your timetable and everything and you've ruined my vacation. He responded with, well, what was I supposed to say? She said, well, say something like this. When I called you the first time from London, you could have said, well, I don't know how, but Daisy's up on the roof and we can't get her down.
He says, then when I got to Paris, you could have said, Lucy fell down from the roof, but don't worry, I've got her at the veterinarian's. He's trying to take care of her. When I finally made it to Rome, you could have said, well, Daisy's not doing well at all.
Finally, when I got to Vienna, you could have said, Lucy died. She said, my mother always warned me about you and your ways. She said, I just can't believe that you brought her for me.
She said, by the way, how is my mom? He said, she's up on the roof. We're going to talk about time today. God's time is opposed to ours.
I'm going to start off by telling you a little story, late summer of 1972. I am enrolled at Lincoln Christian College. I am in – Hey, is your mic on? Is your mic on? It says it is.
Well, that's to say it's a little green, but hey. We can't hear you very well. Don't you prefer it that way? Let me see if I can get this on my – Wait a minute.
I think I have batteries for it. Oh, thank you. Yeah, here's two.
We've got batteries. Okay. Bring this fanciful sermon.
I'm going to need that. I have a PhD in open book. I can give you the whole sermon regardless.
Oh, boy. Yeah, I was thinking, the Lord could hit you with a lightning bolt and charge you up. That's right.
That could happen. So you could have escaped and missed and get your heart cut instead. Okay, is that better? Is that better? No, no, no, no.
Okay. No, we'll just change the subject. We'll change the subject, yeah.
Hello, hello. Yeah, hello. Where do you clip it here? Right there.
I think I'm going in the wrong direction. If I was smart, this could be embarrassing, but it's not, strangely. That's good.
That's good. All right. Late summer 1972.
And I was enrolled to go to Lincoln Christian College. And I don't know what happened. I mean, I graduated from high school at Lincoln.
So all my friends, we had a huge youth group, and all my friends were there at that place. And many of them were a grade less than I, so they were staying for another year. And so I felt like that was the right place, the right move for me to do.
I'm being honest with you, I don't know why. At the 11th hour, I get this tug to not go to Lincoln anymore. I don't know why.
And I needed to go to Central Christian College, a college that I was unaware what exactly they did. I was not very well read on what they stood for, but it was a small thing over and over in Missouri. At that same time, there just so happened to be an Iowa farm girl that was already enrolled at Ozark Christian College down in Joplin, Missouri.
And she was already in her room and had stayed the night, but unbeknownst to her, she told her parents that she needed to quit going to Ozark because she was going to enroll up at Central Christian College of the Bible. So thus we met. I don't know, I was uncertain with the decision.
I don't know why I picked it, and I'm sure Jamie doesn't know why she picked it, but I remember the first time I ever saw her. It was great. I was in the lunch line, and I looked over, and there was this beautiful girl in a black dress with little lavender print flowers on it.
Man, I looked at her and thought, wow. I kind of cocked an eye towards her, and she cocked an eye towards me, and there we both stood, cock-eyed. But the rest, as they say, is history, all because of an unknown decision that altered my life for all these years.
God has a funny way sometimes, doesn't he, of taking sometimes our decisions, even the bad ones that we make, and he's able to somehow work it to a benefit to a greater good. Romans 8, 28, God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. I believe God not only uses good things, decisions that we make, but he also is manufacturing what he wants to do through our lives, even in the bad mistakes as well.
And now I can't. There. Boy, it's one of those days, isn't it? All right.
I wonder how Mary felt, Jesus' mother. I mean, here she is about 14 or 15 years old, and the angel Gabriel approaches her and says, hey, the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you, and you're going to give birth to the Savior of the world. And Mary had a lot.
The timing on that decision was terrible. I mean, she was not married. She lived in a culture and society that was much, much more conservative than what, say, for instance, ours would be.
They would not look kindly to that. Mary had to, on top of that, here she is in her last trimester, and Joseph, her quiet, don't have anything recorded about him other than he was a support to Mary. But he's got to go 70-some-odd miles away from up in Nazareth down to Bethlehem, where his lineage was from.
And I don't know. I can just, I can take it from personal experience that that wasn't the most pleasant trip in the world. A woman who's all that far along, traveling, exposed to the elements, 14 or 15, he's a much older man.
I got an idea that it wasn't one of those great experiences, oh, we just traveled and enjoyed our company together. I got an idea it was pretty rough going around there, around the edges. And Mary, in that travel, the timing of that pregnancy, you know, it seems like it's really bad, a bad time.
She could have said, it's not the right time. But the timing in God's perspective was perfect. This is the only Christmas passage that's almost neglected, but I think that it's supportive of what we want to say today.
And that it says in Galatians, the fourth chapter, verse four, it said, But with the right time came, God sent his son, born of a woman, subject to the law. Now, if you're reading out of King James Version, it would have said something like this. In the fullness of time, that word means something that is just right.
Something that is perfect. In other words, it's saying that God chose the right instant. Even though it was bad for Mary, keep that in mind.
Even though it was embarrassing to her, it was embarrassing to her family. Even though it was all sorts of, how many people do you think in her community said, oh, she was conceived of the Holy Spirit, she says, and believed her on that. I mean, come on, we live in societies all the time where people claim that it was their first time to be together and they offer all sorts of excuses.
Well, I got an idea that Mary hadn't go through all of that, but the Bible says, With the fullness of time came, he sent forth his son, born of a virgin. Well, the expression of fullness of time means that for some odd reason in human history, God says, this is when it'll have its greatest impact. This is when it'll do its greatest mark and change the world more clearly.
And so we see from the very beginning of human history that there is this ongoing promise that God made that unfortunately for many of them, they thought, well, why didn't it happen? He promised this, and I assumed it was gonna happen in my life. And I take, for instance, the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve sinned and fell from God, they experienced a sense of alienation because of themselves and God and because of each other, because of their own hearts.
They were full with all sorts of bad feelings, but God said in the middle of offering that curse, he said, hey, something good's coming down the pike, and I just want you to know that regardless, men that were gonna live in an environment where there were weeds and that kind of stuff and it was gonna be rough to grow crops and stuff, for women it was gonna be pain in birthing and stuff. Then after that, many years later, God would approach a Middle Eastern nomad by the name of Abraham and his wife Sarah. They were an elderly couple who had struggled for decades with infertility, and God said, hey, you will miraculously conceive and through your seed will be a seed that will bless many nations of the world.
That would ultimately be fulfilled in Christ who had blessed the whole world. God would approach Abraham's many times removed great-grandsons, King David, and he would tell him that there would be a king from his offspring that would go ahead and have his throne forever and ever. He would reign with no end.
His reign would have no end. Throughout scriptures, God promised the Savior, hey, someone's coming. You might not see it in your lifetime, but through you, I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna mold the very direction of human history as it is.
You know, why would we say at that time with those people, poor folks, I mean, think about it. They're not educated. Most people in that time didn't know how to read.
It was a strange thing to assume that God would say, hey, when time is right, when it's exactly perfect right, I'm gonna send my son to die for you all, to be born and to die for you. Well, there are several things that we can say as far as acknowledging that, hey, this is the perfect timing. The first thing is politically.
Rome was at its zenith at this time, and Rome had a particular thing that it did when it conquered a nation. Their foreign gods were allowed, and they were allowed to continue to worship those foreign gods. The only thing that they required, they were tolerant, was that they needed to proclaim somewhere that Caesar was God.
Now, you can imagine the Jews had a problem with that because they were to not acknowledge anyone but Yahweh God, and so there was all sorts of problems that came up, and a lot of them were killed. They were handed a thing called a writ, and the writ was it said, hey, it's an exemption. They don't have to worship Caesar.
They don't have to say that he's God. They just need to go ahead and display this, that, hey, we're Christians now, and so we don't do that. I mean, it went so long, you saw a lot of times where people died in the Colosseum and that type of thing.
Many of the people that died there could have very easily been spared if they would just hand a writ that said I'm a Christian and exempt from this. Quite honestly, they refused. They wanted to go ahead and be martyred.
They wanted to die for God, and so during that period of time, many of them died willingly. After a while, the problems kept on coming up, and they said, let's go ahead and change the rules a little bit. They said, the people under our empire must declare that Caesar is God.
Then they put a footnote. Oh, my goodness, they said, accept the Jewish people because they're so stubborn. I think that the Jews were given the exemption, and when Christ was born, they said, hey, Christianity kind of was born out of Judaism.
It's the same thing. And so quite literally, it was something there. Christianity was part of Judaism, and so they allowed it to go on for a period of time, in the right time politically, also because the time was relative peace.
Julius Caesar was assassinated. A civil war broke out in the Roman Empire, and when Caesar Augustus ascended to the throne, there was a time of relative peace, and during that time of peace, that little snippet of time, it's precisely when Jesus was born. Not only that, but the streets.
One of the things that we would say is a little thing, that in the ancient world, the fact that the Romans had been in control. You know what Romans were known for? Billy grows. They were great at Billy grows.
Right now, in Europe, you can go down some of the lanes in some of the more primitive areas, and you'll see ruts that are out of the road itself, and they're exactly four feet, eight and a half inches. Why an odd number? Well, they figured out, and they started going back and back and back, and they figured out that guess what? A Roman warrior's chariot with the two horses in front and the wheels spinning, it was precisely four foot, eight and a half inches, and the trolleys today, all of it, is that particular width. It's because the Romans were so good at making permanent roads that they were able to go ahead and move.
What does that have to do with anything? It has a lot to do with it, if you think about it. Back then, there weren't roads, and so unless you were willing to go ahead and sneak around bushes and everything else that you didn't really have, a Rand McNally map or anything, you had to, quite honestly, deal with the fact that you were gonna head that general direction in the hope that, and a lot of times, there weren't any roads that would provide for them. Culturally, it was the right time, the fullness of time.
There had been a man by the name of Alexander the Great that had conquered the world in which Jesus had come, and with Alexander's victory, spread the Greek culture and language everywhere. Think about how good it is that Paul and Barnabas and some of those people started going out into all parts of the world where there would be the barrier of language. Those people didn't speak that well, the Greek language.
Alexander the Great took care of that. Universally, they came, and they understood the simple fact that a single culture would get them a lot of ways in merchandising, in being able to educate one another. It was an excellent time for them culturally.
The gospel spread, and the good news of Jesus spread much more quickly than it would have otherwise because of the fact that they could all understand one another. Spiritually, it was said that the Greek philosophers, like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, they'd done a wonderful job raising questions about the meaning of life. Someone said that the Greek philosophers plowed the fields of the human heart, and Christ and his followers then sowed seeds of meaning.
It was the perfect time as well. Have you ever thought about this? Okay, you've got men from the east, and they're seeing a star from the east. They saw that we've seen this star.
It was a new thing. They were stargazers. That's part of what magi were under.
They were believed to be stargazers, astrologers. They've been looking, and all of a sudden, there's this bright light, a star. You know how fast light travels? 186,000 miles a second.
186 miles a second. Can you imagine that all of a sudden, God wads up this big ball of energy, and it's centuries before Christ ever came onto the scene, and he hurls it towards the earth, and therefore, all those years, through the time of Adam and Eve, through the time of Moses, of Abraham, all of those people doing their stuff, living their lives, and there's this light that is headed towards the eastern sky, and just at the right moment, when the stargazers looked up into heaven, it arrived, and they could see the light there. God's timing was perfect.
It was a sign that God was in this place and trying to go ahead and work out his perfect plan. God can use difficult circumstances as well. I don't know how many of us have experienced it before, but I have made some pretty lousy decisions in my life before.
Have you? I mean, I have done some of the dumbest things. The only thing that keeps me out of prison is my wife. That's it.
Motorcycle riding was one of them. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
That's another story. Joseph was a sign of his brothers making bad choices, and as a result of making bad choices, God was able to work it for good. Do you remember that they sold him finally? They were going to kill him.
They sold him. He goes through poverty. His wife, he goes through prison, all of these numbers of things, and then there's a famine where he used to live in his homeland, and all the brothers are coming here for the first time in years to see this young guy, and they hate him.
His daddy had shown favor on him. He was spoiled rotten, and here it is, Joseph now that can have control over their lives and kill them if necessary or if that's what he wants. And he tells them, hey, don't be afraid.
Can't you see that through what you did to me, even though it was motivated by evil, God meant it for good to save many lives. Do you see that? It's a bad decision. It was a decision that the law required that you go ahead and kill someone for killing, deliberately murdering someone else, and Joseph had all of the power to go ahead and say, get rid of them all.
They deserve it. But the truth is that God meant it for good, and he saved many lives. I guess I look at Scripture and I look at my life, and I think there have been times where I've made good choices, and God's honored that, but the ones that I strike my head or shake my head and scratch my head and wonder, when I've done something stupid, which is not that rare of a thing.
I mean, I find out that many times God is able to work through those plans as well. Proverbs 16, verse 9, says this. We can make our plans.
We can look down the road and say, this is what we want to do with our lives. But the Lord determines our steps. In other words, you and I can make all sorts of decisions and try and go out on our own, but it's God that is the one that you can't take another step without it being within his will.
J.I. Packard, a respected theologian, points out that we are free in our choices, and yet God sovereignly uses those free choices to achieve his perfect purposes. It's important that we recognize, you all, that a lot of times, things like Christmas itself... Boy, there are lots of things going on here today. If you wanted me to have a heart attack, why didn't you just say so? It's easy to trust God looking forward.
It's not easy, I should say. A guy like Kierkegaard was a great thinker. He said, we understand life looking backwards, but we must live life looking forwards, and that's what's really hard.
The truth be known, God, in his infinite wisdom, said, I'm going to take that little gal that's 14 or 15 years old, unmarried, who's going to be the subject of a lot of ridicule and pain, and I'm going to go ahead at the right moment, and I'm going to have her conceive my son, Jesus Christ. And the world will be changed forever. Let me close with this, Ecclesiastes 3. A familiar passage to most of us, usually at funerals, but it's for everything, there's a season.
There's a time for every activity under heaven. There's a time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to harvest.
A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to cry, and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them. A time to embrace, and a time to turn away from embracing.
There's a time to search, and a time to quit searching. A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear, and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
You look at that passage, there's a lot of bad choices made. Time for war, time to kill, all of those types of things. Time to grieve.
Not things that we look forward to, but even in those worst moments, it says there's a season for it. Why is there a season for it? Because God is still working out the good and the bad in our lives. We need to be surrendered to him.
You know, you see on Facebook every now and then one of our loved ones has had a problem at the hospital and they're not doing real well and they've got to go through a surgery and the chances are good that they might not make it off the table. And so groups of people will pray for us, praying that God will go ahead and save them. Is there anything wrong with that? Absolutely not.
I think that's expected of us. But the thing that I'm always mindful of is that lots of times they come out and they're going to be alright. And what do they say? God is so good.
What happens when your child dies? What happens when the divorce comes? What happens when you lose your job and your security? All those things, as bad as they may be, still are surrendered under the loving and kind and diligent hand of God Almighty. We need to be surrendered, guess what, when the bad comes. We need to be mindful of the fact that yes, even in that first century when Jesus came to a little girl by the name of Mary, it was not a good thing, just looking at the choices that she had to make.
But God was able to take that less than blessed circumstance and bring it to His honor and glory. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for the day that you've given to us.
Thank you for life itself and the good choices that we've made. At times we feel even closer as a result of you working and playing through our lives when things are not going as well as the bad choices that we have made. Bless us, Father, we ask.
Help us to be mindful always of your will in our lives.
Go Deeper
Proverbs 16:9"We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps."
Emphasizes that while we plan our lives, it is ultimately God’s will that prevails.
Genesis 50:20 (Joseph's story)"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."
A powerful reminder that God can use even evil intentions for good.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8"For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven..."
Illustrates God’s perfect timing in every circumstance of life.
Galatians 4:4"But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law."
Points to the perfect timing of Christ’s arrival—the fullness of time—as part of God’s divine plan.
Romans 8:28"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
A comforting assurance that God uses all circumstances, even trials and failures, for His greater purpose.
Comments