God's Timing is Perfect

November 30, 2003, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00 AM

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Things couldn't have been going better for him. He spent a lifetime of working very hard, building up the family business, taking care of the family farm; and he had finally gotten to a point that the operation was large enough not only to take care of himself but to take care of his grown sons and their families as well. Things couldn't have been going better for him. He had his eyes set on retirement. A few years away it would be, but, ah, what a time. He could sit back and look back at how God had blessed him and how his family was taken care of. And then, in one day, in a bizarre set of circumstances, it was all taken away. His sons and their families tragically killed. The farm operation a disaster. Soon after that, his health went downhill. Barely alive, he prayed to God. He prayed to God looking for relief. He prayed to God looking for answers, but he received neither. And he began to wonder, "Does God care? Is God listening?" Will God answer his prayer?

The young couple didn't think about it at first. They were young. They were newly married. Things were going well for them. Certainly, they would have a family eventually; but it really wasn't on their mind. But then a few years later, when they decided it was time to start the family and the months went by and then all of a sudden years went by, they began to wonder. Because each time, as they waited in anticipation, they were met only with disappointment. And so they prayed to God and they asked God, "God, wouldn't you bless us with a family? God, won't you give us a child?" But the months and the years kept rolling by. And so they wondered, "Did God really care? Was God listening?" Would God answer their prayer?

The young man sat in his prison cell. He still couldn't quite figure out how he ended up there. He didn't belong there according to him. He was innocent of all the charges that were brought against him; but nobody would believe him, of course, because everyone in prison is innocent, right? The difference is, in this case, it was true. He had committed no crimes. He had done nothing wrong. False accusations came at him. He was railroaded through the system and, before he could even say a word, there he sat in his prison cell. And he cried out to God and he prayed to God for justice. He prayed to God that the truth would be known. He prayed that God would deliver him from that prison cell and set him free once again. But the months turned into years, and still he stayed. And he wondered, "Does God care? Is God listening? Will God answer my prayer?"

Maybe the next story I tell could be yours. How many times has something happened in your life when you had to deal with a hurt, you had to deal with circumstances beyond your control? And you've looked to God for some sort of an answer. You've looked to God for relief. You've looked for God to intervene or to show you the way or to give you direction and yet you keep looking to God. But the days pass by, the weeks go by, maybe the months and it seems like maybe God doesn't care. Maybe God's not listening and you wonder will God answer your prayer?

The problem we face is the same problem that those other three situations faced. We don't understand God's timing. In fact, I wonder if it's impossible for us to truly understand God's timing. You see, God's timing involves preparation. God's timing always has a purpose, and God's timing is always perfect. Even though we may not understand it, although we may not see it, God's timing is always perfect. The thing we miss the most is the fact that God's timing always involves preparation. We miss out on the preparation because, frankly, we're caught just in the moment. The most we can do is understand what's happening to us right here, right now. Possibly, we could look backwards and see history and see what's happened in our life but, for the most part, all we see is the moment and nothing more. And so we miss the part that God is having a time of preparation for us. And since we can't see that preparation, since we don't understand that preparation and we ask God for answers and we look to God for solutions and when they don't come according to our time schedule, that leads us to all kinds of wrong conclusions, conclusions that say God doesn't care about us, conclusions that say God is unable or unwilling to act in my life, or the conclusion to say that God's too busy for me, that there are other people more important than me so God must be busy taking care of them and He doesn't have time for me.

You know that had to be on the hearts and the minds of the people of the Old Testament, of God's people of Israel, as they had been promised deliverance after deliverance after deliverance, as the prophets had come along and talked about the long-awaited Messiah and they all prayed for deliverance and all prayed that the Messiah would come but they didn't pray for days. They didn't pray for years. They prayed for generations. Generation on top of generation praying to God for deliverance, praying to God that His Messiah would come, that the Christ would be born during their lifetime and yet He never came. Because they were living in the moment. They only saw what was happening in their life, at that particular time. What they missed was God's preparation.

You and I have the privilege of looking back, and we can see that God's timing had preparation involved there. In fact, for well over 600 years, God was preparing His people and God was preparing this world for the Advent of His Son. The prophet Isaiah spoke of Jesus 600 years before He was ever born. The prophet Isaiah talked about the virgin conceiving and giving birth to a son. It talked about Jesus and Emmanuel, God with us. For 600 years, though, Emmanuel never came. For 600 years, the Son of God was not born; but, for 600 years, God was preparing His people and He was preparing the world.

Even if you have a cursory knowledge of the Old Testament, you know that God's chosen people wandered off this way and wandered off that way against God. At each time they had an opportunity, they would go after some sort of false God or they'd bring that God in along side of the one true God. Each time Jesus or God would go after them, He'd bring them back in. Sometimes He would use it as a way of discipline, of sort of capturing the nation, sort of waking them up. The last great thing that happened to them is known as the Babylonian captivity. I don't want to bore you with history, but you'll see in a minute. What happened in the Babylonian history is that the Babylonians came in, they took captive all of God's people, and they carted them off to various places in the Middle East. But some significant things happened during that time. The first thing that happened was they were introduced to a monotheism, that is, that there is only one God. Instead of a culture that had many gods, the culture they were in had one God. That filtered down to them so, all of a sudden, they realized there is only one true God. The second thing that happened in that time was the fact that all the books of the Old Testament as we know it were compiled during those years. They were brought together so that their scriptures, the scripture we know as the Old Testament, came into being in one place so they could study it. And the third great thing that happened was, during that Babylonian captivity, all of a sudden there was the emergence of synagogues, that is, places of worship where they lived. No longer did they travel to Jerusalem because they couldn't, but instead their synagogues were built in each one of the communities so that, on a weekly basis, God's people could come to His house. They could study His word. They could hear the words of the prophet. They could learn about the coming Messiah. They could have that religious instruction they needed. God was molding them. God was shaping them, getting them ready for that one particular moment in time when He would send His Son.

And then God wasn't done yet. In 350 B.C., there was a guy called Alexander. He liked to think of himself as being pretty great. That is because he conquered the whole known world. And one of the things that Alexander brought to the world was a common language known as Koineneah or common Greek. So with Alexander coming in now, there were no geographic or ethic lines that would stop the word of God from being spread because there were no language barriers. There was a common language for all people. They had their dialect, but all of them knew Koineneah. They knew common Greek, so the message of Christ could be spread throughout the land, throughout the known world.

And then finally, God brought in the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire brought with it roadways, safe travel between main destinations so you could travel between cities and you didn't have to worry about being robbed or being mugged because that was part of the Pox Romana or the peace of Rome. That's what enabled St. Paul to travel to Galatia and to Corinth and to all the other places so he could spread the news of Jesus.

Once God had all that in place, once all that preparation was done, then the fullness of time had come and God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under law. But now note each generation for 600 years had no idea what God was doing. Each generation, as they prayed to God, thought, "God's not listening. God doesn't care. God's not going to answer my prayer." But the opposite was true. God was listening. God was active. God was answering their prayer and, when everything was right, then He intervened in our world.

When you and I pray to God and we look for answers and we seek solutions, we'll be so tempted to think that God's not listening, that God doesn't care, that God's not going to answer when in reality, God's timing always involves preparation. When God is getting us ready for something, something that maybe we don't even expect, something we couldn't even dream of, it isn't that God doesn't hear you. It isn't that God doesn't answer you, but it's His time, not your time. And His time always involves preparation. God's timeline always has a purpose to it. The things that God does and the progression in which He does them, there's always a purpose behind it. There was a purpose behind why God sent His Son into the world at a specific moment at a specific place. Most of the people didn't get it. 99.999% of the population didn't even know when Jesus was born. At the outskirts of Bethlehem in a stable to a poor man and woman, a child is born. Nobody took notice of that. Most of Jerusalem, most of Bethlehem, that whole area had no idea what had happened although they had been waiting for hundreds of years. But God had a point. God had a purpose, and the purpose wouldn't be known for another 33 years, not until Jesus hung upon the cross would the purpose be known of why God sent His Messiah to be born of a woman, born under law. It was not until Jesus was hanging upon the cross that the purpose would be known. You see, God sent forth His Son and He didn't come in with a big fanfare. He didn't come as a fully-grown adult. Jesus came as one of us. He was born of a woman just as all of us were. He was born under the law, that is, the law that each one of us is born under, the law that says unless you're perfect, heaven is out of the realm. It won't happen. The law that says and convicts us in our heart of all the things we do wrong, the conscience that bothers us and reminds us of those remarks that we shouldn't have made, the actions we wished we wouldn't have done. It doesn't take us very long to be convicted of the fact that we are not perfect as God desires us to be perfect. We were born of a woman. We were born under the weight of that law, and the law says be perfect or you've lost. So God comes in, born in the same way, born under the same law but the difference is God is perfect. God does keep all the commands. God never sins, so He was born that way so He could redeem us, scripture says, that He could buy us back. 33 years earlier nobody understood why Jesus was born of a woman; but when He hung upon the cross, when He took upon our sins and the punishment for those sins, then we understood. Then we understood God's timing and God's point and God's purpose. Jesus was born of Mary only to die for you. He was born of Mary only to die for our sins so we could call Jesus our brother, we could call our Heavenly God our Father.

God's timing always has a purpose to it. Nobody understood. Nobody understood how God acted or why God acted in sending forth Jesus as a baby. But 33 years later they did. God will act in your life, and you may or may not understand what He's doing. You may or may not understand why He's doing the things He's doing, but God always has a point. God always has a purpose, and it's going to be a larger purpose than what you could have imagined. He's going to do something surprising for you that you never even thought of but in God's timing. God's timing always has a purpose to it, and there is always a deeper meaning when God acts because God's timing is perfect. It's always perfect. At the right time, God sent forth His Son. When all of history came together for that moment, when everything had been put into place, even the fact of Caesar Augustus calling for a census so that Jesus would be born in the town that was prophesied that He would be born in. Every piece, every detail came together and, at that perfect moment, Jesus was born of Mary, born in that stable.

And that's why this week, when you leave here, you're going to receive the first piece. You're going to receive that stable. It's a reminder to you. It is a reminder of God's perfect timing, his perfect timing of sending His Son so that the gospel message could be spread, the perfect timing of getting the whole world ready so Jesus could be born. And a reminder that God's perfect timing is in your life also. Even if you don't understand, even if you think God isn't listening, God is and God is acting. Maybe this is the time of preparation. Maybe God has a higher purpose, higher plan than what you thought of. But God's timing is perfect, just as it has been perfect for all of God's people throughout all of time, just like God's timing was perfect for those three incidents we talked about at the beginning. The man who was looking at retirement and he lost everything, lost his sons and their families, lost his whole farm operation, his name was Job. You can read about him in the Old Testament. And, at the right time, God answered his prayer. The young couple that wanted to start a family, they wanted to have sons and daughters, that would be Abraham and Sarah. And it wasn't until Abraham was 100 years old that God blessed them with a child. The young man who sat in prison falsely accused, that would be Joseph. Joseph sat in that prison longer than he could have ever imagined but, at just the right moment, at the perfect timing, God brought Joseph out of that prison and, because of his leadership, millions of people were saved from the famine, including God's chosen people, the Israelites. God's timing was perfect in all three instances. And God's timing is perfect in your life. Amen.

Copyright 2003 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church