I think just about every single person ever is running this mental calculus all the time, whether we know we're doing it or not. And I guess the term for this, you know, the that transcends all different religions and walks of life and persuasions about how things are. I think the term is fate. Everyone's always thinking about fate, about how stuff lines up, about how actions cause results, about counterfactuals. That sounds real fancy, is the term that smart philosophers, I guess, apparently use to talk about things that could have been but weren't, if this had just bounced a slightly different way. Everybody's always adding that up because we think in terms of cause and effect, and we think in terms of what if. There's a whole Marvel series called What If, where they just explore, what if this had bounced that way instead of that way? Or what if this had happened a moment later than when it actually happened? Country musicians seem to love this theme in kind of a sentimental way. Garth Brooks, when I was a kid, had that, it's about to come to me. Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers. It's the song that he sang about. I prayed for these things to happen, but that isn't what I really needed. And I'm glad that this other thing happened. Okay, you know, that's cool. Um is it Diamond Rio? Uh, I try not to think about what might have been. That's little Texas, isn't it? I don't know. You'll tell me. You know who you know who it is. Uh what might have been, though. I mean, that's thinking about fate. It's thinking about counterfactuals, it's thinking about a time and space added up to make what is as compared to how it could have worked out. My daughter loves this country musician named Jordan Davis. I don't like him at all. He's got a good beard, but I don't like his haircut. It's all rich and luxuriant, but the beard is nice. And he has a song called Almost Mabies. And I this is my Google voice because I don't remember the words to it exactly, but I've heard it. So I'm pulling up the words. You have a Google voice too. Don't judge. It's absent-minded, it's just a placeholder voice. Found it! Here we go. Almost Maybes by Jordan Davis. This is the punchline that I want you to hear. Here's the tears and beers and wasted years on the weeds that look like daisies. I wouldn't be sitting here next to you if it weren't for the almost maybes. The key grammatical mood or tense that almost always goes along with this thinking about fate and how time is worked out, it's that conditional. It's couldn't or wouldn't, would have, wouldn't could, they always fit into this. So it's no surprise that I wouldn't be sitting here next to you is right in the middle of this Jordan Davis song about how time works out. You and I, in less sentimental ways, we think about this all the time. I dang, I was just standing right there. If I hadn't moved, I would have been crushed. Yeah, sometimes we do it out of guilt. If I just would have made that phone call, would things have worked out differently? Sometimes we do it out of relief. Thank goodness I made that phone call. Who knows what might have happened if I hadn't remembered to do that? Thank you for reminding me. What if my girlfriend hadn't dumped me in eleventh grade? Then I'd be married to her and not to my wife. I mean, that's the kind of thing that I guess Jordan Davis is running here and Garth Brooks and all the others with that kind of stuff. Everybody thinks about fate. Maybe that's not the best word to use, but again, it's sort of a general word that works for anybody and everybody when you talk to it. It's a word that translates and travels really well. Within Christian theological thought, uh, the term might be providence, because the Bible presents a God here who knows everything, is surprised by nothing, is bound by nothing, which I guess would include time. He's the master of counterfactuals and what might have been, what may yet be, and what will be, and all he knows all of those things. He's run that calculus. And one of the terms that you come across in the Bible for this concept is the fullness of time. You'll hear that turn of a phrase come up around Christmas time a lot. You know, the fullness of time, this is when God sent his son to take on flesh. This is when the incarnation happened, the pivot point in history, or for you and me, as we're looking at Galatians 4 over the course of our discussion here, that fullness of time is the moment where we pivot from the kid era, who's really no different from a slave practically, but is set to be an heir to the household. The fullness of time is the moment where history and we pivot from that to the era of being an heir, of actually realizing our role in the household. So I just want to think about that little turn of a phrase right here for just a minute. What I'm saying is this as long as the heir is a child, he's no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He's subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, I'm trying to verbally underline that for you, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law that we might receive the full rights of sons. Paul is treating the arrival of Christ as the pivot point in history. There's a transition period, maybe it's the lifetime of Christ, from his birth up to his death and resurrection, but that's it. That's the moment on which all of history pivots, on which God's redemptive plan pivots. The rest of the Bible seems to support this as being the fullness of time pivot point of all of it. And I mean, even the way we render history. I mean, come on, you can call it C E and B C E all you want, which I think is adorbs, by the way, that we continue to try to do the B C E C thing. You surely have noticed that I use the now very unfashionable and antiquated ADBC designation. Yeah, here's the difference between the BC B C E thing and the BCAD thing that I use. I'm telling the truth about what it actually is. Yeah, I'm gonna get on this soapbox for a second because all of history pivots on Jesus, even people who don't like him very much, even people who don't believe in him, still, it is what it is. That's where history pivots. That's the rendering, that's what's won, that's how we calculate it. No doubt there'll be some effort by someone at some point to reimagine how we calculate years. Some overly bloated ruler will come along, and after he gets done slurping sloppily down a plate full of overripe tomatoes, as the tomato slime slic down his disgusting chin, he'll be like, I have an idea.
SPEAKER_00We should re-render the years from the beginning of my reign.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna happen. There's always some megalomaniac who tries to do that, but the truth is we count years from Jesus on and Jesus back. It's the pivot point in history for us as well. So BCBCE is actually just kind of a fraud. You're just putting a different name on a thing that still is what the thing is, so why not just call it what it is? I'll continue to use B C A D. We can get along if we disagree on that. The point is, Paul, Jesus, the rest of the Bible, indeed, all of the people who keep track of what years things happen in, which is pretty much everybody agrees that there is a fullness of time moment here. This is the pivot point. So what do we mean by fullness of time? And why did God pick this point to be like, this is where it all comes together? This is where all of the things that did happen and that didn't happen and that could have happened, but might have happened, but wouldn't happen, but did happen in just the right order and confluenced at just the right time? This is the fullness of time moment. Why isn't the fullness of time moment that's being referenced here when we go from the kid era to the air era? Why wasn't that two hundred fifty BC? Why wasn't that twelve hundred AD? Why wasn't that with the election of Richard Nixon? Why wasn't that the day the Emancipation Proclamation got signed? Why wasn't it five thirty eight BC when Cyrus took over and let the Jews go back to rebuild the temple? Why was the perfect moment of the confluence of all of the maybes and all the yeses and all the no's and all the things bouncing just the right way under the providential, watchful eye of God, who is steering everything where it needs to go for his glory and his redemptive purposes, why then? And you know me pretty well. Of course I'd like to take months to think about that. Instead, I'm going to take one day, and that day is going to be tomorrow. But no matter how you slice why Jesus is that fullness of time moment, the pivot point moment, there's no arguing that the Bible says that the Jesus moment is that fullness of time moment on which everything hinges. Fun, fun, fun. You know what's about to happen here? We're about to fly through the rest of Galatians. Listen to how many pages I have to turn to finish this. Because I'm right at the end of that page. So that one doesn't count. Don't listen to that turn page turn. Here's how many pages I still have to turn before we're done with Galatians. It was one. I don't know if you could hear it. It was only one. So the deal, as always, is when we get done with a book of the Bible, we're trying to get that book of the Bible in our hip pocket. It's not just a podcast, it's an exercise in you and I putting in the time and the energy and the effort and the thought to get a book of the Bible as well as possible in our hip pocket. Hopefully that's where we're gonna be in this many more pages. It was one again. When we're done with the book of Galatians. So to commemorate that, I've been making these stickers, and I'm gonna continue to make these stickers forever. My friend Bethany helps me with these, and by helps me, I mean I give her an idea, and then she does everything because she's super talented. We're gonna send everybody who supports the podcast on any level, on any platform, one of these stickers that you can do whatever you want with to commemorate the achievement of this season of your life going through the book of Galatians and getting this book in your hip pocket. We're a ways away from that yet, but I want to give you the heads up that, hey, we got to be thinking about what book's next here. And I would love your feedback on that. And also, if you want to support this thing at any level, again, you can just jump in for whatever, anybody who's supporting it all, when the mailing happens, you are going to get the Galatian sticker to commemorate this season in your life and commemorate getting Galatians in your hip pocket. As always, there's no expectation on any of that, but this sticker thing is one thing I can do to just say thank you and try to put action to the appreciation that I feel. If you want to know more about how to support the program, there's always a link down below in the show notes. You can go and check that out if you want to. If not, that's cool too. All right, we're gonna go try and figure out this whole fullness of time thing and why it is the Jesus moment next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.