Winston Churchill once said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” As a young man sitting in a high school history class, I was willing to accept the consequences of that statement. My professor was an intelligent and energetic man who was clearly passionate about history. Nevertheless, history was the class I disliked the most. To me history was nothing but an endless list of names and dates that needed to be memorized. I struggled to see how the assassination of an Austrian archduke named Ferdinand in 1914 had anything to do with the life of a Michigan boy in 1989. And it wasn’t just world history that I disliked. I probably shouldn’t admit this as a pastor, but I will confess, even though I had some wonderful Sunday School teachers, I was not always a fan of biblical history either. I mean I have always liked theology; I have always liked discussing sin and grace, But memorizing the names of patriarchs, prophets, and the kings just never appealed to me. As a result, I couldn’t tell the difference between Jehoram, Jehu, Joash, Jehoida, Jehoahaz, and Jehoshaphat. (truth is I still can’t) Even when I was at the Seminary study church history, I struggled to keep all the dates I was supposed to memorize organized in my mind. I remember something significant happened in Germany in 1517 and I know 1850 is an important date for confessional Lutherans in America, but beyond that…
Despite Winston Churchill’s warning, as soon as I graduate and hung the piece of paper on the wall that said I was qualified to preach and to teach, I never thought I would study history again. Until one day, I was out for a run and accidentally clicked on a history podcast. The person on the podcast was talking about history differently than I had ever heard before. They were telling history in the same way Mark Twain talked about a riverboat ride down the Mississippi or Nathaniel Hawthorn described the life of 17th century puritans living in Boston Massachusetts or Garrison Keillor mused about the lives of Lutherans living around Lake Wobegon. The person on the podcast was telling history like a story, and I loved it.
Once I started to see history as a series of connected stories and gave myself permission not to memorize a list of names and dates, I found I very much enjoyed history. That is part of the reason why this summer I want to preach a sermon series on some of the old bible history lessons we learned when we were in Sunday School. I want you to fall in love with the greatest story ever told, the story of our salvation. I do not plan on giving you a list of names and dates to memorize. Rather, I hope to tell you a series of connected stories that will show you how your God, in the fullness of time, saved you.
When I thought of a verse to launch a summer sermon series on bible history lessons, Galatians 4:4-5 came to mind. There saint Paul writes, “4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” If you have ever attended a Christmas service than you have likely heard these verses. It is not uncommon for a preacher to talk about the Pax Romana when discussing the fullness of time. Rome’s network of roads, organized laws, and unified language all support the statement that the baby Jesus was born when the time was just right, or in the fullness of time. But when you read these verses outside of the context of Christmas you realize the fullness of time extends far beyond the Roman empire.
Saint Paul tells us in the fullness of time God sent His Son “born of a woman”. Naturally the woman that comes to mind is the virgin, Mary. But Mary is not the first woman through whom God sent His Son. The first woman through whom God sent His Son was Eve. Shortly after Eve sank her teeth into the forbidden fruit and plunged all creation into sin, she found herself standing before God making pathetic excuses for her act of rebellion. “The devil made me do it”[1], she deflected. Graciously God responds to this pitiful excuse by promising that from her would come a Son who would save the world from the very sin she had brought into the world. Eve got excited when her first son was born. She named him Cain, but it soon became apparent Cain was not the son who would save us.
It quickly became clear Eve was just the first in a series of women through whom God would send His Son. Consult the genealogy of Jesus as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 1, and you will notice there are a handful of women highlighted through whom God sent His Son. After Eve the first woman mentioned is a woman by the name of Tamar. Tamar became a woman through whom God sent His Son when she dressed up like a shrine prostitute and tricked her father-n-law (Judah) into sleeping with her and getting her pregnant. Tamar is the great great great great grandmother of a man named Boaz. The mother of Boaz was a woman named Rahab from the city of Jericho. Rahab was not a pretend prostitute like Tamar, she was the real deal. Rahab the prostitute was able to escape destruction of Jericho because she secretly aided and abetted the spies Joshua sent to look over the land they were about to invade. After the walls of Jericho came tumbling down Rahab the prostitute was spared. It is unclear whether or not Rahab ever met her daughter-n-law, but she was a penniless widow from a foreign land. Her name was Ruth. Ruth left everyone and everything she knew to follow a bitter old woman to the little town of Bethlehem. Ruth famously says, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”[2] Ruth went, Ruth stayed, and not only did Ruth become one of God’s people, but she became the great grandmother of Israel’s greatest king. The king’s name was David. He has been described as “a man after God’s own heart”[3]. No doubt David often made his great grandmother proud, but not all the time. Ruth’s great grandson had an adulterous affair with a woman who isn’t even named in Matthew’s genealogy. There she is referred to as the woman who “had been Uriah’s wife”[4]. Her name is Bathsheba. We are going to tell her story in much greater detail later this summer. For now, it is enough to know that a descendant of this adulterous woman marries a young virgin from Nazareth by the name of Mary.
These are some of the women through whom God sent His Son. You don’t have to memorize all their names or the years in which they were born. I mention these women and a little snippet from each of their stories simply to point that God sent His Son through a series of rebellious, deceitful, immoral, impoverished, and adulterous women (and by the way that is just some of the women. Read about some of the things done by the men through whom God sent His Son and it will make you blush.). Read the stories about the women through whom God sent His Son and you quickly realize they just like you, are sinners in desperate need of a savior.
Individually, each one of them has an interesting story to tell, but collectively they explain why in the fullness of time God also sent His Son to be born “under law”. The Son God sent through a rebellious woman was obedient, so obedient that even when His life was on the line the Son prayed to the heavenly Father, “not my will, but yours be done.”[5] The Son God sent through a deceitful woman was honest, so honest that He was compelled to give a self-incriminating testimony. He told the High Priest “I am”[6] the Christ the Son of the Blessed One. The Son God sent through an immoral woman was pure, so pure that even His pagan judge said, “I find no basis for a charge against this man”[7]. The Son God sent through an impoverished woman was rich, so rich that a drop of His blood paid sin’s damnable debt in full. With the words “it is finished”[8] He balanced our ledger. Finally, the Son God sent through an adulterous woman was faithful, so faithful that He perfectly followed the Father’s plan to His very last breath. The Son God sent was obedient to the law so that all those women through whom God sent His Son and all of us who, like them, have been disobedient to the law might be redeemed.
You see, God sent His Son born under law to redeem those under law so that our stories don’t have a tragic end. In the fullness of time God sent His Son “that we might receive the full rights of sons”. In a very real way, the end of this story is actually the beginning of a story that has no end. If this were a fairytale we might expect to read ‘and they lived happily ever after’, but this is not a fairytale. This is the true story of our salvation. When the time has fully come and gone, we will continue. Because of Jesus, ours is a never-ending story of peace, joy, and happiness. In heaven the stories of those rebellious, deceitful, immoral, impoverished, and adulterous women through whom God sent His Son will continue. And in heaven, because of your faith in the Son God sent in the fullness of time, so will yours; your story will continue.
The bible is an endless series of stories that span thousands of years and include a complicated cast of characters. Don’t worry I am not going to ask you to memorize any dates or names (though some might stick with you). Rather, I am going to do my best this summer to make you fall in love with these stories. I am going to tell you about man and woman created in the image of God. Pastor Fedke is going to tell you about a family and a flood. I am going to tell you about an old man who haggled with God, a punk kid who became a prince, a people who stood at the bottom of a sea and didn’t get wet, a king who wore a crown of guilt on his heart, and a queen who risked her life to save her people. And if all goes well, I might tell you a few more stories after that. But the reason I began this sermon series with Galatians 4:4-5 is because I don’t want us to lose sight of how all these stories end. The one thing all these stories have in common is they all lead the believer to eternal salvation. What makes these stories so great is that every single one of them tell how God, in the fullness of time, saved us. Amen
[1] Genesis 3:13
[2] Ruth 1:16
[3] 1 Samuel 13:14
[4] Matthew 1:6
[5] Luke 22:42
[6] Mark 14:62
[7] Luke 23:4
[8] John 19:30