The Divine Timing of God's Redemptive Plan

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You get the impression that God has his times, his occasions, and his durations, and he governs the world according to these times and durations that he has set. Here's an example of that in Acts 1:7. Jesus said to them, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons. [00:04:46]

This is a huge theological statement that the seasons, the periods of history across the world from creation to consummation, and all these seasons, civilizations rising and falling, and redemptive historical dispensations coming and going are all fixed and set by the Father. [00:05:22]

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son. So God has set the time for when he will bring the son to maturity, as it were, and bring Christ into the world and make justification manifestly clear by faith, not by law-keeping. That fullness has come. [00:06:12]

God has a time frame in which he is going to bring everything to consummation, and all the seasons of history are going to be full and complete, and he will bring it all to a great consummation. Now, a more specific question would be what was full about the duration that ended with the coming of Christ. [00:07:08]

The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. It's not yet fulfilled. It's not yet filled up. So just think about that. I'm just using this as a pointer to the kind of thing that could cause a season to be full. The iniquity of the Amorites, who are going to be driven out of the land because of their wickedness, that wickedness isn't full yet. [00:08:01]

The law, which came 430 years after Moses, I mean after Abraham, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it is no longer by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. [00:09:31]

The law was brought in because of transgressions until The Offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. So here's The Offspring coming when the fullness of time had come. God sent forth his son. So I'm inclined to think that the fullness of time here was the fullness of time when this law had done its transgression-causing fullness. [00:10:23]

The law had a function not only to show Israel that by her failures she cannot gain the inheritance, gain salvation through law-keeping. She must have a redeemer, and she must put her faith in the Redeemer, and the death and the righteousness of the Redeemer must be the ground of her acceptance, not law-keeping. [00:11:02]

The function of the law was not only to make something plain for Israel, namely the multiplication of transgressions through the misuse of the law by treating the guardian taking us to Christ as the end of the law, not the means by which we get to the end of the law, namely Christ. [00:11:49]

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified. That's the point of the law at one level. 1,400 years, give or take a century, I don't want to be precise here. 1,400 years from Moses to Christ in order to bring about this truth and lesson through the law comes the knowledge of sin, not justification by law-keeping. [00:12:19]

We should be reminded that God sets the times, all of them, all the millennia, all the centuries, all the high points and low points are appointed by God in his historical work, bringing things to his great consummation. And in this case, the fullness of time was when the law had done its decisive work. [00:13:05]

The law had become, as it were, a lesson book for the nations that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world held accountable before God. That was the function of the law. Through the law comes the knowledge of sin, not only for Israel but through the whole world. [00:13:34]

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