Photo emailed from dad Blick, 2011

IX. The Sermon: In the fullness of time. Gal 4 – Rev. Tobey Brockman, Senior Minister, Redeemer Church, Lincoln, NE

The Big Idea: God restores our broken relationship with him by sending his son in the fullness of time!

I. The eternal relationship that is shared by God shared in eternity past.

The Bible is a love story – His exclusive love for himself and for His people to share exclusive love with.

In John 17 before Jesus is arrested, Jesus prays to the father for his disciples to hear. He is praying about relationship – His with his father as the source of the creation itself. We exist because God created the world as overflow of joy in ther trinity and not to get something he lacked.

The three members of the godhead lack nothing. Rather, they delight to defer to one another and make the other look majestic. They delighted to glorify one another and this love was so deep that God was moved to create the world and share this intimacy with us, those who bear his image in creation.

The passing of the peace is not just something we do in our service, but what we were created for.

II. The lost relationship that God suffers with us.

However, we don’t love him as was intended in creation. Even though God made us to be in perfect fellowship with him, he lost us because of our sin. But because he loves us, he comes back to get us. Our old testament reading from Genesis 3 shows how sin killed this perfect relationship.

BUT, in the fullnes of time, God sent his own son into our lost world and our lost relationship to bring us peace with God.

What marks the lostness of our relationship?

A. As you and I think about God, we get scared.
If we were to actually stand before a holy God, we would be in trouble and could never do it. In a street interview of a lady in Vancouver in a church plant video, she said that she does not believe in God the way that we do. She says it is safer and the pressure is taken off of her to believe that she is safe here on earth away from a holy God, if there is one. However, we have a sense, though we have succeeded at so many things in life, that we have failed and could not stand before the perfect, holy God.

B. We want to be our own God. Gen 3, Satan’s lie in eating of the tree was to believe we could be like God. After eating, they saw they were naked – exposure and shame and guilt – to stand before another person’s watching eyes and know you are guilty. That is what it feels like to be lost.

III. The restored relationship.

Galatians 4 is the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 that the seed would come and restore and buy back this relationship. Ironically, back to the Vancouver interview, this IS how the pressure is taken off of us before this holy God – not in a lie that there is no God, but in that Jesus was born UNDER the law and for sin. He bears this weight of our justice before the all-seeing God.

1 John 4:10. This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and pursued us!

Why do people go to church? One person has said that it is mainly for those over age 60 who want the magic Willie-wonka golden card to get into heaven for free. Tobey grew up believing that he would take his kids to church when he was 30 and they were under 10 years of age to learn right and wrong so as not to get arrested.

Galatians says that we go to church rather because we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God! In that relationship of adoption, Jesus prays in John 17 that God would love us THE EXACT SAME WAY that he loves his son. That is how God views you! Do you believe THAT Christian? Do you believe that God’s heart leaps with joy the same way that it does when he beholds his son Jesus? We are now his sons!

What does this mean for us?

A. We are safe with our heavenly father. John 10 says, no one will snatch them out of God’s hand – because no one is greater than the father and we are held by him! Tobey was adopted at 5 weeks old with his twin brother. In high school he was arrested and brought home to his parents. He was sure that his dad would disown him. Instead, with arm around him, he said, Tobey, I love you, and whatever you have to go through, I will go through with you. He got the message he was safe with his father.

Many of us feel that God will reject us when we fail. But that is just not true.

B. We can have real intimacy with our heavenly father. Verse 6 says that because of the Spirit in us, we can cry out to him as Abba father, or DEAREST father – not distant ruler or king but loving dad.

What will judgement day be like for believers? God will say, You remind me of my son, welcome home!