Sermon notes, First Advent

INTRODUCTION
When Jesus comes into the world, He claims that the “time is fulfilled,” and the rest of the New Testament fills this out. With the coming of Jesus, a new age begins. We live in a different time because of Jesus, and this different time should be embodied in our time-keeping, in our calendar.

THE TEXT
“Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father . . . .” (Galatians 4:1-11).

TIME KEEPING GOD
God is concerned with keeping time. He is not bound by time, but He is also not detached from time and disinterested in time. From the very beginning of creation, He has been keeping time. He defines what constitutes a day (“evening and morning, one day”) and enumerates how many days it takes for Him to create the world. He provides details about the life-spans of the earliest men, so that we can trace an unbroken genealogy from Adam through the Bible. God is concerned with how we count time, and we as His images should be concerned with time as well. If God is interested in keeping time, time-keeping cannot be neutral.

BEGINNING OF MONTHS
This is reinforced by the fact that God gave Israel a distinct calendar after He delivered them from Egypt. The month of Passover (in the spring, March/April) was to be the first month of their calendar (Exodus 12:2). Other events shaped the remainder of the year: Passover, in the third month, celebrated the giving of the law, and the feast of booths included a commemoration of the time Israel spent living in tents in the wilderness. When Yahweh does something new, He begins a new time, a new calendar. Israel already had a calendar, and they continued to keep time according to that calendar as well. But with the exodus, the “liturgical” calendar was added to the existing calendar. The purpose was partly commemoration, but also discipleship. Israel rehearsed her history and as a result was disciplined to obey her savior, Yahweh.

ADVENT
The time-keeping God sent Jesus at the right time. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel was like a minor child growing up, under the guidance of guardians and managers. Israel reached majority in the “fullness of time,” and Israel finally grows up. God is doing something new as He did in the exodus and when God does something new, time is changed. He starts the calendar over again. Just as Passover became the beginning of months to Israel, so the coming of the fullness of times is the beginning of months for the church.

FULLNESS OF TIME
The coming of Christ at Advent means the coming of the fullness of time, the arrival of the end time into the present time, the arrival of the age to come. That means that we begin a new time, a new calendar, and historically that calendar begins where it should begin – with the beginning of our redemption in the coming of the Son in the flesh.