Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, Go therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to Go Teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through Australian and international speakers.
And here is today's presenter, Dr.
Robert Granger. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning as very broken people and we have nothing to offer and we reach out and we claim what you've done for us. So, dear Jesus, I just ask that you give us all insights this morning as we allow the Spirit to drive home the points from scripture.
We thank you and we pray this in your name. Amen. You may have heard of John Harrison.
John Harrison was a carpenter and he was a self taught clockmaker who lived in England in the 1700s. And he responded to the challenge of the British Parliament at the time, who wanted someone to come up with a way of more precisely locating longitude for sailors. And it became known as the Longitude Prize and was worth at that stage, 20,000 British pounds back then, which today would be around 3 million pounds.
You see, locating latitude is pretty straightforward. You know, north, south of the equator with a point centred in the middle of the Earth extending out to the surface of the Earth. It's, you know, so many degrees up and you can do that via fixed celestial objects and other things.
And so there's no problem in locating latitude. But longitude was very different. East, west of a certain point was more challenging and the only way to do that precisely was to have an accurate timepiece.
And so the story of this young man, John Harrison, who took decades to do what he eventually did, really well accounted in a book by David Sobel called Longitude, A great read of the tenacity of this man in finally coming up with a clock that eventually worked. And here was the masterpiece. Now, this looks like a little clock that might fit in your top pocket.
Not so. It was around 12, 13 centimetres in diameter and it was a seaworthy. It was his maritime version.
And this is one that is what they call the H4 clock. Captain Cook would have used the H4. In fact, he did use the H4 when he went circumnavigating the world, including here in Australia, a pretty amazing clock, because even back at that stage in the 1700s, he was able to get the timing down to an amazing loss of under one second per day, which is just an incredible feat.
Now you'll have on your hand maybe a digital watch. The accuracy of your digital watch might be in the order of maybe losing 10 seconds in the month. Something that's a little bit more high end.
Something like this Breitling, very fancy expensive watch. This might lose in the order of 10 seconds across a year. This watch here, which is a whole lot cheaper, can synchronise with one of the world's atomic clocks and get you to an accuracy of losing about one second every 100,000 years.
Now, the world's best atomic clock at the moment has an accuracy losing approximately one second every 100 million years. And they're working on what they call an optical atomic clock where it will get up to 1 second loss every 15 billion years. Now if God had not created an orderly universe that was regulated by laws, such a feat of having an accurate timepiece would simply be impossible.
After all, how can order come from chaos? And how can accuracy arise from randomness, which is really what science postulates? And there's no question that with God there is accuracy, there's dependability, there is order, there is precision, there is trustworthiness, there is reliability. And God, I believe, created time. Now the interesting thing is that God is not bound by the things which he creates.
But we as the created, we are very much confined to and bound by this time space continuum. He is not, which is the reason why. And I don't understand this verse.
And I'll read this to you from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 57:15. It's a verse I don't understand.
I'll tell you right up front. I don't understand it, but it still challenges me. Isaiah 57:15 says.
For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits what, who inhabits eternity. That's his dwelling place, is eternity. Eternity in the past, eternity into the future.
He doesn't have a dwelling place. He doesn't require a space like we require a space. He doesn't reside in Bunbury, he doesn't reside in Palgarrup, he doesn't reside in Donnybrook.
I mean God. There is nothing that can confine him. He is not constrained by space.
He is not constrained by time. And this morning I want to contemplate with you the perfect timing of God in his dealings with humanity. You see, we as humans, we deal in the subject of.
We talk the language of coincidence and happenstance, luck, fluke. But God doesn't use such terminology. That's not his domain.
God doesn't transact in such currency. God is very timed. He's very methodical, he's very intentional.
He's very purposeful and meaningful. And we're going to see that God operates in a whole different realm. And because he does, we can trust our lives to him more fully.
And I want to focus my thought and attentions this morning on a particular statement that comes from the book, Desire of Ages. And by the end of the sermon I feel that I will have failed if. If this statement is not burned and etched into your memory.
And that's what I'm hoping this morning will happen. And it's not going to be difficult to do because it's just a few words in length. This is how the statement starts.
And in fact, even this is pretty amazing. Like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path. We don't think of stars having an appointed path, do we? We think of a little bit random stuff just whizzing around the place.
No, God has appointed a path for the stars. And like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God's purposes know no haste and no delay. Now what's another way of saying that God's purposes have no haste and no delay? We could say that God's purposes are what? Right on time.
God is right on time. And that's what we're going to see this morning. We're going to explore this incredible promise this morning.
And I want you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 12. We're going to go through a few biblical passages as we look at these incredible facts of God and his character where he can be dependent because his purposes know no haste and no delay. Exodus chapter 12.
Exodus chapter 12. And we'll come to the verse here in just a moment, but let me flick the screen here because I want to talk about this very briefly. This prophecy, a 430 year prophecy.
And there's some verses up there and you can read around it because it's not as it appears. The 430 year prophecy began when God called Abraham out of Haran to go down and to possess Canaan. And it ended when the children of Israel left Egypt.
That's when it began. That's when it ended. And you also have what we call a 400 year prophecy that sort of began 30 years after the beginning of the 430 year prophecy.
But the 430, 400 end at the same point when the children of Israel are delivered from Exodus. Now take a look at this. Exodus 12:41.
And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years on that very same day. This was not 430 years. Sort of approximately, you know, a week or two later, a month or two later, or a little somewhere around there.
This was 430 years to the very day. And what we quickly discover about God and the way in which he deals with us is that there is no man, there is no angel, there is no institution, there is no nation, there's no event, there's no calamity, there's no Pharaoh, there's no nothing that can stop God from acting exactly how, when, where, and in whom he purposes. It's a pretty amazing thought.
It's really deep. There's no question. God's purpose is no haste and no delay.
Let's keep on building on this. Come with me to Genesis, chapter 24. This is an amazing story.
Genesis, chapter 24. You might recall how Abraham wanted a wife for his son Isaac. And so he says to his most trusted and elderly servant, I want you to head up to my home country.
I want you to find a wife for my son. Gave him that mandate. He had to, you know, he had to swear that he was going to be doing that and do it faithfully and well.
And so off the servant goes. And we pick up the story in verse 12. When he arrives at the location, he sees all these women coming and going.
He says to the Lord, oh, Lord, God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day. This servant wasn't planning on hanging around for long. It wasn't like, this is going to be a task that I want to be, you know, just on the hunt for the next week or month or two.
He was pretty intent. He was going to sort this out today, show kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, here I stand by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.
Now let it be that the young woman to whom I say, please let down your pitcher that I may drink. And she says, drink, and I'll also give your camels a drink. Let her be the one you have appointed for your servant, Isaac.
And by this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. It's a pretty simple thing, wasn't it? It's a pretty simple request. I could even say maybe a little bit naive.
How many camels did he have, by the way? Verse 10 tells us, took 10 of his master's camels and off he went. Well, and it happened. Verse 15.
Now, this is kind of almost like, you know, sort of a little bit of human language almost, you know, like, well, would you believe, wow, what a surprise. And it happened before. When? Before he had finished speaking.
So before he had finished uttering his prayer, behold Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, came out with her pitcher on her shoulder. Now, the young woman was very beautiful, a virgin. No man had known her.
And she went down to the well, filled her pitcher and came up. And the servant ran to meet her and said, please, let me drink a little water from your pitcher. And she said, drink, my Lord.
And then she quickly let her pitcher down to her hand and gave him a drink. And when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking. 10 Camels.
I think one camel, that's a lot of work for this young lady. 10 camels takes it to a whole new level. You know, it almost sends, you know, just makes me feel like goosebumps just thinking of, you know, how.
How could God have orchestrated this while he's still praying? God is making this work for this servant done. God's purposes know no delay and no haste. Come with me to the book of Judges.
Joshua, Judges, Judges, chapter seven, Judges, chapter seven. And this is where Gideon had been called by God. The Amalekites and the Midianites had been harassing God's people.
And God said, that's enough, that's enough. We're going to change things here, and I'm calling you, Gideon. And Gideon had been given ample evidence that he was the man, that God was going to work through him.
God was going to be performing a miracle. But it's very understandable that Gideon was just a little reluctant. After all, how many men did he have on his side to go against the Midianites? 300.
How many was he up against? If my memory serves me correctly, I think it was in the order of 120,000. Did Gideon have reason to be a little bit concerned? Yeah, he did. And God recognised that.
And we see in chapter 7 and verse 10 and verse 9. Let's start in verse 9. It happened on the same night that the Lord said to him, arise, go down against the camp, for I've delivered it into your hand.
But if you're afraid to go down which he was, go down to the camp with Purah, your servant, and you shall hear what they say. And afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp. And then he went down with Purah, his servant, to the outpost of the armed men who were in the camp.
And now the Midianites and the Amalekites, all the people of the east were Lying in the valley, as numerous as locusts, and their camels were without number as the sand by the seashore in multitude. And when Gideon had come, there was a man of all places, of all places in the valley, of all men to come across. Came across a man that was telling his dream to his mate, lying beside him and says, I've had a dream.
To my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian. He came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned. And the tent collapsed.
And his companion, lying beside him, says, well, this is nothing else but the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp. And it was so that when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation that he worshipped, he returned to the camp of Israel and says, arise, let's go.
The Lord's delivered us Fluke Coincidence. Not at all with God. Here is this little barley loaf.
Nothing to offer, nothing to bring to God. The only thing that he could possibly bring is a sacrifice of obedience. You know, I've got no question that God's purposes know no haste and no delay.
Turn with me to the book of Esther. So keep on going forward in the Old Testament, you'll go past Nehemiah and let's take a look at Esther. Esther, chapter six.
You recall the story. The king couldn't sleep. This is King Xerxes I, also known as Ahasuerus.
He couldn't sleep and he commanded someone to bring the books and to be read from the chronicles. And they were read before the king. And it was found written that Mordecai had told of these couple of guys, the doorkeepers, who had sought to lay hands on King Ahasuerus.
And Mordecai had sort of broken this threat. And the king said, well, what honour or dignity has been bestowed on Mordecai for this? And the king's servant said, well, you know, you, Honour, nothing. Nothing's been done for Mordecai to date.
Well, the king says, who's in the court? Let's ask. Well, Naaman had just entered the court of the king's palace to suggest that the king hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him. Oh, there he is.
Come on. In verse six, Haman came in. King says, what shall be done for the man whom the king delights to honour? And of course, you know, Haman was thinking about himself and it was really about Mordecai.
And we Know the rest of the story? The humiliation that Haman experienced. Oh, so it was just happenstance that Ahasuerus couldn't sleep that night, and then he happened to want to have a certain book of the Chronicles read to him. And they just happened to come across the story of Mordecai and it just.
Man, what a coincidence that Haman should be walking in at that very time. God's purposes. No, no haste and no delay.
Come with me to the New Testament. You've got to love this story too. John, chapter 11.
John, chapter 11. And Bethany, the township of Bethany were grieving. They were grieving because one of their own had just died prematurely.
John 11:21. Martha says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother Lazarus would not have died. Verse 32.
Mary comes and falls at Jesus feet. Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. The rest of the multitude, verse 37.
Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind have also kept this man from dying? You know, God's timetable is not ours. It never is. Why did I lose my job the way that I did? Why did I lose my health? Why did I lose a bodily function when I did? Why have I just lost a loved one? Why has my house just gone underwater? Why is my farm property just been burned down? And we don't always have an answer or an adequate explanation.
And yes, we must admit that sin in the world does a lot of tragic things to people. But we also don't understand what is really going on behind the scene. That God knows that he understands that God is in control.
And we see here that God in the form of Jesus was not too late. He wasn't late at all. In fact, they said to him, you know, when Jesus went to go and remove the.
The stone from the tomb. Verse 39, take away the stone and Martha. Lord, do you realise that he's been dead for four days? He'll be stinking.
Lord, you're four days too late. You're four days too late. God wasn't four days.
Jesus wasn't four days too late. He was right on time. And Jesus then has a prayer.
It's not some big rambling lengthy, it's just sharp and short and straight to the point. Father, he says, Verse 41, I thank you that you've heard me, and I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing here by, I said this that they may believe that you sent me. And then he says those three words, Lazarus, come forth and out comes this shuffling form bound up by all of these bandages.
Jesus, right on time. Absolutely right on time. Come back to the book of Nehemiah.
So if you found Esther before, just come to just before. Esther. Nehemiah, chapter 2.
And by the way, with Jesus there in Lazarus, God's purpose is known. No haste and no delay. And here we now have the story of Nehemiah, cupbearer to the king, King Artaxerxes, not to be confused with Xerxes I or Ahasuerus of Esther's time.
This is Artaxerxes. And he comes into the presence of the king and he's a little bit sad. Verse 1 and verse 2.
The king says to him, why is your face sad? Since you're not sick, this is nothing but sorrow of heart. So I became dreadfully afraid. Whoa.
To be sad in the presence of the king. And the king happens to notice it. This is not a good thing.
And he said to the king, well, may the king live forever. But why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies waste and its gates are burned with fire? And the king said to me, what do you request? I don't believe at all that Nehemiah says, look, hold on just a second. Gotta race off into my little chamber, have five, ten minutes of prayer with the Lord and come racing back.
And now I can talk with you. No, this is one of those times that we often, we all confront at some point in our life, like Peter sinking in the water, lord, help me. And God instantaneously gives him the words which he should say.
And the words were, if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favour in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild. And the king says, well, how long are you going to be? What sort of time are we talking about? Well, he told him, and it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a time. And then he started to get a little bit more bold.
And when we're in the audience chamber with God, that very thing can happen. We can get a little bit more bold with our prayers. Well, if it pleases the king, I actually want some letters also to be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the river, that they might permit me to pass through till I come to Judah.
And, you know, in fact, while I'm thinking of it, I think that you should also give a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's Forest because he must give me timber to make beans for the gates of the citadel, which pertains to the temple. Friends, what holy boldness comes when we are able to trust in God and what he's prepared to do through us. And here he is.
Utters that prayer Bam. There it is, just like that. God's plans for Nehemiah, they knew no haste and no delay.
I recall when I was a child, I worked out, I probably would have been about eight or nine years of age. And our family, the five of us were living in that township that right now is underwater Gympie, Southeast Queensland. In fact, when we lived there, 1974 was the time of another horrific flood that went through Gympie.
You look at the records, there's a few famous floods there and 74 was one of them. I got to witness the Mary river and the street, all just like buildings, the main street, you know, underwater and what a. Anyway, so there we were, living in South East Queensland, time for a holiday.
Dad hooks up the caravan to the back of the HR Holden. And that's telling my age as well, isn't it? Who knows what a HR Holden looks like? There we go, we see some old timers here, the old HR Holden. And there I was in the back seat with my two sisters, 12 years younger, 12 years older.
And there we were off bright and early one morning and we were driving along and dad says, look, sign to a waterfall. So he turns off the road with a caravan, goes up just a very short little, slight little sealed road, slight little rise back down the other side and there is a large grassed parking lot, sort of sloping gently downhill. Now, if you know anything about Queensland eastern states, first thing in the morning, what would you expect to see with that grass? A little bit of dew, the humidity over there.
So here's this dew on the grass. Dad drives off the sealed road, makes his way across the grass. Here's this parking lot.
There's no boundary around this parking lot. It just comes straight to the edge and drops down into a deep ravine. Dad comes along onto the grass, clearly attempting to stop.
And the vehicle is not stopping, it's sliding across that wet grass. We're silent in the car. And this next memory is absolutely just etched deep within.
It's kind of one of those things that will never leave me. Slipping along the grass, getting faster and faster with the momentum, the weight, the slight little bit of downhill caravan pushing and this chorus of voices yelled out from the back seat. It's an amazing thing to remember because me and My two siblings, we all said the same thing at exactly that same moment and we all yelled out as we see that ravine coming up, we all yelled out in unison, dad.
And at that very instant, at that very instant, just metres from the edge that HR Holden turned, that caravan comes to a sudden stop. Almost this neck jerking stop. We get out of the caravan, we look at this ravine.
We gave praise to God because we knew that there was only one thing that happened. There was nothing to do with that car. There was nothing to do with the change of the surface.
This was God, this was an angel. Who says this Granger family has not met their potential just yet. It's not their time.
You know, I've got no doubt reflecting back that God's purposes know no haste and no delay. A few years ago and I've told this story before from this very pulpit but I don't mind repeating it. You may have, there's a good chance you would have forgotten.
So that's all good. A few years ago I was studying for my fellowship examinations for dermatology. And for those of you who have any insight into a fellowship examination, it's sort of one of the most cruel things that could be inflicted on a human being and very soul destroying and, and not at all a thing that I relished in.
And I was studying almost on a daily basis for three and a half years whilst working full time preparing for this series of examinations. And on one of those exam days, which is not a part of my story here but my father passed away on one of those days and that was, that is a whole different story. But I said to Darlene as I had been doing, I need to take another week off of personal leave to just really just.
I'm on the homeward stretch here. I need to just focus a bit more and study. I'm planning, I want to go down, we're living in Adelaide.
I'm going to take the van down, live as a hippie for a week and go and study. I'm going to take my big boxes full of books and I'm just heading on down to study. She said well that's fine, I'll go over to Western Australia, visit my family.
And which she did. So I go to Kangaroo island. There it is, that large island there off one of the peninsulas just to the southwest of Adelaide.
Now this is not the kind of island that's sort of a five minute walk around. This is an island that's four and a half thousand square kilometres. It's 145 kilometres from east to west, this is no slouch of an island.
Beautiful, scenic, lovely. And I began to drive around and my first day there was in fact a Sabbath and I drove down to that south little point there called Pennington Bay. So I was at Pennington Bay car park right there where that dot is.
In fact, that's sitting on the car park and you can see some cars lined up there. And there was just a short little hop onto the beach there. And as I left the car park, stepped onto that small little trail, there was a couple walking up and it turned out that they were a couple of American tourists.
Got talking, she wasn't saying much at all. He was a lovely man and talking away and just had a really great conversation and really, really enjoyed the time that I spent with him. And eventually we parted ways.
Later in that afternoon, I found myself up on the north part of the island at Emu Bay. Hours later, up at Emu Bay, sitting, reading, contemplating, went down to the beach, a small little community. There was no one around.
I couldn't really see any cars, there was just no movement there at all. And the sun was beginning to set. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice? I'll just go down and sit on the beach there and just close Sabbath there.
And so I went down onto the beach. There's all of this seaweed everywhere, that sort of ribbon kind of seaweed that blows up onto the beach. And it was quite, quite mountainous in areas.
And I climbed up on one of them and sat onto my seaweed sofa and I contemplated, I prayed, I read and sunset. And I had one more prayer and I said, God, I just want to just intercede for a few people. And I closed my eyes and because no one was around, I thought, well, no, you're doing this silently.
Let me just voice myself. And so I'm just casting my voice across the water there, praying and. And I thought, you know what I should be praying for, Dennis and Diane, that I had just met, and I share this with you and God is my witness in saying this, that as I was praying and I said, and Lord, I lift up before you, Dennis.
As soon as the word Dennis left my mouth, I hear this voice booming across the sands. It says, Robert. I knew that no one was there, Robert.
I lifted my head and spun around and there was Dennis. There was Dennis. He says again, because it was now dusk, getting a little bit dark.
Robert, is that you? He said, I jumped off that seaweed, ran over to him, walked up to the car park where his partner Diane was. He pulled me aside a little bit and said, I'm actually pretty sad. I now began to understand, you know, it's okay for me to pray for someone, but in this instance God says, okay, you're going to utter the word Dennis, no worries, here he is.
And I want you to be the instrument for him. I want you to be a support and encouragement to him. You're going to be the one who's going to, to answer your own prayer.
I got talking to Dennis. He's a professor of zoology at one of the major universities there in California, in fact, University of California, one of their campuses. A preeminent individual, his partner, a virtuoso violinist, played with one of the well recognised symphony orchestras in America of international repute.
He said, this will be one of our last trips. We've just been to New Zealand, we've just done areas in Australia. We are now about to fly back in the next couple of days back home to California.
And he says, my heart is broken. Why is that? He says, Diane has advanced dementia. I thought, oh, that's the reason why she really wasn't talking all that much.
He says, I don't think we're going to do any travel of any sort from here on. I don't know what I ended up saying to Dennis. I cannot, I don't have a recollection of that at all.
And I just hope and pray that whatever was said that there would have been some impact. We corresponded via email after that once he got home. And I don't know, but eternity will tell.
But I'm left with absolutely no doubt within this instant, in fact, there was more to do with Dennis. And I won't go on with it because it's an interesting story, but I was left with the impression that God's purpose is no. No haste and no delay.
How can that work out? How can that work? Isaiah gave me some insight in all of this. Isaiah and I just need to read this to you. Isaiah, chapter 65.
And I just got to read this because this has been a promise to me ever since that experience. Isaiah chapter 65 and verse 24, it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they are still speaking, I will hear.
You know, you get to sort of experience that firsthand and you think, you think God, how does this work? Come with me to the last story to the book of Daniel, because we're going to see something very similar that happened to Daniel. Daniel, chapter nine, Daniel, chapter nine and verse 20. While I was speaking while I was praying, while I was confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God.
Yes, while I was speaking in prayer. So what's the point that he's really trying to drive home here? Well, this is a pretty amazing intervention that's happening. So while I'm praying, while I'm in the depths of my prayer, God answers me whilst I'm praying, Gabriel was sent to inform me, to talk with me and oh Daniel, I've come to give you skill and understanding.
It related to a four and then a new prophecy comes out. And this is one of the most astounding prophecies I believe in all of scripture. 70 weeks are determined.
If you go back and take a look at places like Numbers 14:34 and elsewhere, we see, you know, day for a year, so 70 weeks. So there's seven days in a week. So 70 times seven, 490 days, okay, 490 weeks are determined for your people, for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation, for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision and prophecy, to anoint the most holy.
Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks. There's no doubt that this great prophetic time span is being given here and that also happens to be linked up to that 2,300 day prophecy as well. But here we see this span, this 490 year span, 69 weeks will bring you up to a certain point.
And that point is that we're going to see the Messiah. We're going to halfway through that week, halfway through that seven year time frame, three and a half years into that, that final seven year stretch, the Messiah is going to be cut off. There will be an end of sacrifice.
At that point there is no question about the beginning point. 457 B.C. it's so entrenched in history, there's no mistaking the starting point where the three decrees went out by Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes that gave final and full authority and autonomy to, to the city of Jerusalem.
But then we also see that Jesus was baptised. And at what point did Jesus become the Messiah? It was at his baptism. The anointing of Jesus at his baptism, that was as it were, the beginning of his Messiahship.
And that date, there's absolutely no misgiving as to the, the date AD27. Come and have a look in the book of Luke, Luke chapter. It's absolutely fascinating.
Luke chapter three. In fact, we see the baptism there of Jesus a little bit later in the chapter, verse 21. You know, John baptises Jesus, but Luke chapter 3 in verse 1 where it pinpoints this, this ad 27 date.
Let's make absolutely no misgivings about this date. Now in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being the governor, Herod being the tetrarch of Galilee, the brother Philip the tetrarch of Itura, and Lysanias who was the tetrarch of Abilene. And you go back in history, you look at all of this and whammo, guess what? You triangulate all of that to A.D.
27. It's absolutely amazing. And as I got thinking about this, I thought, you know what, I too am sort of dependent on this process of triangulation.
I, some of you know, I sort of enjoy getting up, doing a little bit of flying. And one of the planes I fly is the gps and the way in which I can navigate that is without a map. And I'm reliant upon the GPS is I'm reliant upon a system of satellites.
Now it's no good for there to be one satellite because that is not going to be of all that much help. Two satellites giving different angles and different time sequences from the satellite down to earth, et cetera. That's going to be a little bit more reliable.
But no, that's totally a no go. Three satellites, yeah, definitely better. But I'm not going to go flying with three satellites.
Four satellites, yeah, that's pretty good. It's not until I get five and six satellites. In fact, I must do.
Before you go off on a, on an instrument flight, you must do what is called. You must do a raim check R A I M receiver Autonomous integrity monitoring. I've got to make sure that I have satellites in place not only from the commencement of my journey, not just simply during the en route phase, but also the landing phase.
Am I going to have still a whole complement of satellites to safely guide me home? And so it's dependent upon this triangulation here we see, we see this whole ad 27 Bam. You can't mistake it, it's fixed in history. Take a look at this quote here.
And by the way, I should say that, and the quote is given in Mark that when Jesus was baptised, the cry goes out, the time is fulfilled. What time is that? That's the prophetic time that Daniel have given. The time is fulfilled.
Take a look at this here. This quote actually continues on from the one that we've been talking about, about God's purposes. No haste and no delay.
It continues by saying this. So in heaven's council, the hour for the coming of Christ had been determined. And when the great clock of time pointed to that hour, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
And Galatians says when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. You know, there is a school of prophetic interpretation out there which has absolutely taken the world by storm. A dispensationalist form of thinking.
It's futurism and it is adhered to by the majority of the evangelical Christians. And I'm not going to spend time on this other than to just flag it with you because it's really not relevant to what I'm sharing today. But they talk about, you know, they use language like the secret Rapture.
You've probably heard of them talking about the seven year tribulation. You've probably heard them talking about a future Antichrist, a literal drying up of the river Euphrates, a literal Israel that restores the sacrificial system, a literal Armageddon fought with literal arms against literal Jews there in the Middle East. And a lot of this has got to do with that 70th week of Daniel where effectively they say, yep, we believe in this, this 490 year, this 70 week prophetic week span.
And what they do is they take the 69 weeks as being fulfilled in the past and they clip off the 70th week, that final seven years, and they lift that up and they cast that off to the future. Friends, let's not mess with God's perfect timing. You know, and I don't know if you can see that picture so well, but you might be able to see some scars on the hands there.
And you see the gavel representing judgement and the hourglass and the watch and the question's got to be asked. We've spoken about a lot of things, a lot of God's timing, but does God actually have a specific date in mind that he's going to return to the earth? You know, there was a time for the flood that was predicted. There was a time for the Exodus, there was a time for Christ's first Advent, there was a time that was predicted for his baptism, for the crucifixion, for the resurrection, for the Ascension, for The Holy Spirit to be shed in power for the time of the end for judgement.
Would it not make sense that he also has a time for his second coming. Can we know what that is? Well, if you were to look at Revelation chapter 10 and verse 16, it says very clearly there, and it uses that Greek word chronos. There will be chronos no longer.
There will be time no longer. And a lot of versions unfortunately say that there will be delay no longer. I believe that that will is, as it reads, time.
There is time no longer. You know, we have had a, in the past, a message related to time. But as we take a look at the three angels messages, which is the last messages to the earth, nowhere is there embedded a message of time that says, well, this is when Jesus is coming back.
You must herald this time. Not at all. Take a look at this statement here.
This is really interesting. This is from Ellen White's first vision. She says this.
Soon we heard the voice of God, like many waters, which gave us the day and hour of Jesus coming. The Living Saints, 144,000 in number, knew and understood the voice, while the wicked thought it was thunder and an earthquake. Ellen White heard in vision the day and the hour of Jesus return.
She did. I believe it. I've got no reason to disbelieve that.
But as she reflected on this later, look at also what she said. I have not the slightest knowledge as to the time spoken by the voice of God. I heard the hour proclaimed, but had no remembrance of that hour.
After I came out of vision, scenes of such thrilling solemn interest passed before me as no language is adequate to describe. It was all a living reality to me. Friends, we don't have a message based on time, but what we have is this.
Take a look at this statement here from the great controversy. Though no man knoweth the day nor the hour of his coming, we are instructed and required to know when it is near. We are further taught that to disregard his warning and refuse or neglect to know when his advent is near will be as fatal for us as it was for those who lived in the days of Noah not to know when the flood was coming.
How could you not see it? Here's this great big craft, something like the world has never seen being constructed. And there's the preacher of righteousness. And if finally they step into the ark, the door is still open, the door of mercy is still open, until an unseen hand comes and swings that mighty door closed.
There was an opportunity. You couldn't miss it. Friends, as I look at the planet today you just need to go and look at some passages like Matthew 24, Mark chapter 13, Luke chapter 21 and others to show.
And I'm going to use probably a non technical term and a non theological term, but this planet is going down the googler and thinking men and women and I encounter them, I must admit, through my practise on a daily basis. People who don't even profess Christianity are questioning something's going on. Yeah, okay, there's wars and there's rumours of wars, but let's not also get caught up with this whole thing that wars must just simply be, you know, the ta ta ta type of war.
You know, there's cyber war going on out there, there's psychological warfare, there's a lot of crazy stuff. And if you want power then and you want control, then there's two principal things that you must get on your side. Number one is finances and number two is information.
You get those locked up and you know you'll have power and you'll have control. We see men, women being lovers of self, we see financial catastrophes. If you haven't thought about it today, you've really got to start rethinking.
You know, it almost seemed fairy tale stuff just a few years ago, what no man can buy or sell. How's that going to happen? Well you see it happening pretty clearly, can't you? Just a flick of a button. Russia's financial system switched off from the rest of the world at a flick of a button.
Someone could just turn off your bank account, bam. Just like that. And the more that we transact in a non cash format, the more likely that is to hurt.
You know, the environment is getting a hammering and friends, this is not going to let off God's purposes. Know no haste and no delay. And I believe that Jesus coming is in fact at the door.
There was a book I read a few years ago and I, and I need to reread it. It's a phenomenal book and if you haven't read it, I would challenge you to read was written nearly 30 years ago by Edward Read. Even at the door, I don't know if the library's got a copy, but if anyone wants to read this, it will challenge you to the very core.
30 years old makes no difference. It reads like it was written yesterday. Friends, time is coming to a crunch.
It's crunch time here on planet Earth. And Paul tells us in Ephesians, he says, he says you've got to redeem the time. You got to redeem the time.
How on earth can we redeem the time? What can we do? It's very simple. Simple. You must use wisely that which remains.
And I share this final quote here. It says, our time belongs to God. Every moment is his, and we are under the most solemn obligation to improve it.
To his glory. Of no talent he has given, will he require a more strict account than of our time. The value of time is beyond computation.
Christ regarded every moment as precious, and it is thus that we should regard it. Life is too short to be trifled away. We have but a few days of probation in which to prepare for eternity.
We have no time to waste, no time to devote to selfish pleasure, no time for the indulgence of sin, because Christ is even at the door. We're going to sing. I invite the singers up.
I, in hindsight, should have chosen that hymn. We know not the hour, probably too late to change to that, but that's all right. I've chosen this other hymn, Take Time To Be Holy, I think, which is also just as appropriate.
So thank you. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the call that you've given today to each of us today, myself included, that we've just got to recognise the great outworkings of divinity in our lives and reflect much upon them, particularly looking unto Jesus and reflecting on his life and what he's done for us and his ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. Now, on our behalf, we have nothing to fear.
We've got everything to hope for and I thank you and I pray this in your wonderful name. Amen.
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