God promised eternal life before the beginning of time. Jesus could have come at any point in history to make that promise a reality. He could have come when execution was swift and easy, but He didn’t. He came when execution was very slow and very, very painful. The Bible calls that the right time.
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Transcript:
Thanks for visiting Bible Mountain. This is the 15th lesson in a series of lessons on the book of Titus. In this lesson I’m going to look at the third verse and talk about Jesus being revealed at the proper time.
Let’s start by reading the first three verses of Titus.
Titus 1:1 Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of the elect of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to Godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which the God who never lies promised before the beginning of time. 3 He revealed His word in its proper time by a proclamation with which I was entrusted according to a command of God our Savior.
In verse three it says, “He revealed His Word in its proper time.”
Let’s look at several verses throughout the Bible that give us the context in which to understand the statement that His word was revealed in its proper time. Let’s start in Genesis, chapter three.
As you know, in the beginning God created the universe and everything in it. He created Adam and Eve. He created Adam and Eve perfect, but they sinned and then God confronted them with their sin. Let’s start reading in verse eight.
Gen. 3:8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;
15 And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
I want to focus on verse 15. This was the Lord talking to the serpent. He said man was going to bruise the serpent on the head and the serpent was going to bruise man on the heel. If you think about humans and serpents, that’s exactly what happens.
When men go to kill a snake, they attack the head, because if you attack any other part of the body, the snake still has the ability to bite you. However, if you crush the head, then you eliminate the danger.
Likewise, when a snake attacks a human, it typically goes after the heel, ankle, or shin because a serpent is on the ground. That’s the part of a human that the serpent can reach.
That’s the literal understanding of this verse. However, we can also see in hindsight that this is a picture of the contest between Jesus and Satan.
Satan caused Jesus to be crucified, and in that way Jesus was bruised. We can also say Jesus crushed Satan on the head because Jesus rose from the dead, He conquered death, and ultimately Jesus is going to win the battle between Him and Satan.
I don’t know if Adam and Eve or the author of Genesis understood that that is what verse 15 was predicting. I don’t know if people in the Old Testament time period who read the book of Genesis understood that that is what it was predicting. However, in hindsight we can see that that is the picture that was being painted here.
The point is there was a curse on the serpent around 4000 BC, and it was a picture of something that would happen between Jesus and Satan 4,000 years later. That helps us understand what the Bible means when it talks about Jesus coming at the proper time.
Let’s go to Genesis 12 and start reading at verse one.
Gen. 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Let’s look at that last line, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” I don’t know how Abraham understood that promise, but we can see in hindsight that this was fulfilled, ultimately, in Jesus. Jesus was a descendant of Abram. When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, He blessed all the families of the earth.
We see this promise later in Genesis in chapter 28. Let’s start reading at verse 10.
Gen. 28:10 Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. 12 He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. 14 “Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
We see in verse 14 a repeat of the promise that had been given to Abraham, but it makes it a little more specific. We see that this descendant of Abraham who would bless all the families of the earth would come as a descendant of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. One of Jacob’s descendants would bless all the families of the earth. Again, I don’t know how Jacob understood this promise, but what we can see in hindsight is that Jesus is the One who fulfilled the promise, because He blessed all the families of the earth when He came to Earth, died on the cross, and then rose from the dead, conquering death and providing salvation for all men.
Those are three passages from Genesis that give us a picture and a prediction of Jesus coming to earth. The promise would not be fulfilled for several thousand years. A logical question is “Why did God wait several thousand years to fulfill these promises?” That’s where we get into the concept of coming at the proper time.
Let’s go to the New Testament and look at several verses that talk about Jesus coming at the proper time or at the right time. Let’s start in the Gospel of Mark, chapter one, verse 14,
Mark 1:14 Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Notice Jesus said “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” There had been promises centuries earlier about a Messiah, and Jesus basically came into Galilee and said the time is now. The kingdom of God is here. Repent and believe.
Let’s go to Romans 5:6.
Rom. 5:6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
We see here a statement that Christ died at the right time. That tells us that when we think about the promises in Genesis of the Messiah, and a descendant of Abraham and Jacob who would bless all the families of the earth, the reason it took several thousand years for Him to come is because the time was not right. However, the first century AD was the right time, so that’s when Jesus came.
There are several more verses that repeat this idea. Let’s go to Galatians 4:4.
Gal. 4:4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
Jesus came in the fullness of time. Let’s go to Ephesians chapter one and start reading at verse seven.
Eph. 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.
We see again in verse 10 this idea of the fullness of time. Also, we see that Jesus summed up all things in the heavens and on the earth.
Now let’s go back to Titus and read these verses again. Think about what it says about Jesus coming at the proper time.
Titus 1:1 Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of the elect of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to Godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which the God who never lies promised before the beginning of time. 3 He revealed His word in its proper time by a proclamation with which I was entrusted according to a command of God our Savior.
God promised eternal life before the beginning of time, but God revealed His Word in its proper time. Jesus is His Word.
This tells us God does things in His time. He does things on His timetable, not ours. But we’re still left with the question, what was it about the first century AD that made it the proper time?
When Jesus came to earth, the Roman Empire controlled most of the known world. The Romans had built a network of roads, and there was a language that was common throughout most of the Empire. This made communication and travel somewhat easy. After Jesus went back to heaven, having told His apostles to go out and spread the good news about Him, it was fairly easy for the apostles to do that because travel, commerce, and communication were much easier than they had been for many, many centuries.
Here’s something else I want you to think about regarding the proper time. As you know, Jesus came to earth during the Roman Empire. Jesus came to earth because He had to die and pay the penalty for our sins. The Father could have sent Jesus at any time in history. He could have sent Jesus at a time in history where the method of execution was the electric chair. He could have sent Jesus to earth at a time when the common method of execution was hanging or the guillotine. All of those methods of execution are somewhat quick, and while they still end in death, the duration of the pain is somewhat short.
However, that’s not what the Father did. The Father sent Jesus to earth during the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire used crucifixion as their method of execution. Crucifixion is perhaps the most painful form of execution that the devious human mind has ever invented.
Out of all the empires that have ever existed on the face of the Earth since the beginning of time, Jesus came to earth and placed Himself under the authority of an empire that had figured out how to inflict the maximum amount of pain on someone as they were executing him. That’s what Jesus subjected Himself to. When we think about Jesus coming at the proper time, He didn’t come when execution was swift and easy, He came when execution was very slow and very, very painful.
With that in mind, let’s look at one more verse.
Rom. 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus not only demonstrated His love for us by dying for us, He also demonstrated His love for us by the way He died. He came to die at the proper time. The proper time involved enduring one of the most painful forms of execution that humanity has ever invented.
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