Timing Is Everything
Romans 5:1-11
SSUMC
Lent 3
February 24, 2008
Timing is everything.
Timing is an important element of maximizing life’s opportunities.
If our timing is off, we risk losing out.
If you’re a baseball player, and your timing is off, you’re in trouble. A great
hitter knows when to swing and when to wait. If your swing is off, your game is off.
If your game is off, you end up on the bench. That’s hardly maximizing
opportunities.
Sometimes having your timing off can be a matter of life and death. When
the Apollo 13 astronauts lifted off the launch pad on April 11th 1970, the crew felt
their timing was right on.
What a great opportunity!
The crew members were
Commander James A. Lovell,
Command Module pilot John L. "Jack" Swigert, and
Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise.
They came along as astronauts at just the right time.
They were going to the moon. They had high hopes.
They’d trained and conditioned themselves to withstand the rigors of the flight and
landing on the moon. They were prepared to step out of the space module onto the
moon’s surface.
Great timing.
But the flight's problems began with a malfunction during the liftoff where
an engine shut down two minutes early. After that four other engines ran for longer
than planned to compensate.
The timing was now off.
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Then, two days after the launch, the Apollo spacecraft was crippled by an explosion
caused by a fault in the oxygen tank.
Apollo was 199,990 miles from Earth.
Suddenly, the focus of their success shifted from a moonwalk to saving the
astronauts’ lives.
The explosion damaged oxygen and electrical carriers in the ship resulting in a loss
of both oxygen and power.
The crew was forced to use the Lunar Module as a “lifeboat” in space. The Lunar
module was the section used to land on the moon.
The damage done to the Service Module meant that the planned Moon-landing had
to be aborted.
Getting home was the new mission.
To return the crew to Earth as quickly and safely as possible, a single pass around
the Moon was made, using the Moon's gravity to "slingshot" the spacecraft back to
Earth.
A significant course correction was required to do this. The flight controllers
on the ground did not know exactly how much damage the module had taken and
did not want to take certain risks.
During all of this engineering on-the-fly, one of the major challenges in
keeping the crew alive was that the Lunar Module "lifeboat" was only equipped to
sustain two people for two days, but had to sustain three people for four days.
Considerable ingenuity under extreme pressure was required from both the
crew and the flight controllers to work out how to jury rig the craft for the crew's
safe return.
They had to guide the ship and fire the rockets at the perfect time to re-enter
the earth’s atmosphere. If their timing was off, the ship could bounce off the
atmosphere and be lost.
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Despite great hardship caused by severe constraints on power, cabin heat,
and usable water, the crew successfully returned to Earth. The mission was thus
called a "Successful Failure".[2]
By maximizing their known opportunities, the Apollo crew and ground flight
crew had a successful outcome to what could have potentially been a timing disaster.
Timing was everything.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he states, if only briefly, that “at the right
time, Christ died” for us (Romans 5:6b).
In other words, in God’s perfect time, salvation came to us.
There are at least three ways that the time was right:
First –– It was the right time in history. The Pax Romana (which means
“Roman peace”) made it possible for people to travel and communicate
widely, making it easier to spread the Gospel.
Roman peace lasted for some 300 years, which easily spanned the time of Christ
through the lives of the apostles, Paul, and early church Fathers.
Paul’s journeys are the perfect example of Roman freedom in a time of peace.
He was a Roman citizen who traveled somewhat freely throughout the Roman world
to spread the Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Of course,
Christianity wasn’t the state religion at the time, but Paul was chosen for such a
time as this to establish God’s message that the gift of salvation comes through one
man, Jesus the Christ.
Second –– It was the right time in our lives. We were needy because of our
sin, and Christ's death and resurrection satisfied our need for reconciliation
and forgiveness.
Karl Barth writes, “What Christ has done, he has done apart from us…” “And so
those of us who are “separated, either by time or by” place “from the (actual) scene
of the Crucifixion…” are able to “share in the actual experiences of those who stood
by the Cross.”
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“He died for us while we” – with “all that we are, and have, and do – were (and are)
weak and godless.”
Paul writes, "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were
sinners Christ died for us".
It doesn't seem to make sense that Christ would die for sinners, but Jesus
says, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick"
(Matt. 9:12). Jesus' logic is compelling. Why would he save people who do not need
it? Why wouldn't he save sinners –– those in need of salvation?
We are the sinners he died for.
Third ---- It was the right time eschatologically –– the time that suited God –
– that fit God's plan for the salvation of the world.
Paul writes in Galatians (4:4), “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent
forth his Son…”
God is eternal. God has no beginning and no end.
But “For everything (in creation) there is a season, and a time for every
matter under heaven.
2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what
is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to
embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past
and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the
beginning to the end.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1).”
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Yes, God is eternal. God knows everything past, present and future. God
knows and God can be trusted with our faith, our love, and our very lives.
The story of Esther in the Old Testament is a story about how God is there
for us in all things.
Esther was a young Jewish girl who lost her parents and was raised by her
uncle Mordecai.
Ahasuerus was the king of 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.
As the story begins, Ahasuerus was enjoying himself maybe a little too much
at a party when he began to feel quite proud of himself. He decided he’d show off
his beautiful queen, Vashti. So he sent for her, but she refused to come and be a
spectacle before men during his bragging game.
Ahasuerus became angry and, of course, embarrassed, so he decided to find a
new queen.
Now this all seems quite silly and prideful of both Ahasuerus and Vashti, but
listen to how God works through their weaknesses.
The king set out to find a new queen.
And as God himself would have it, the king was smitten by Esther.
One day while checking on Esther, Mordecai ran into Haman. Haman
worked for the king and had won Ahasuerus’s favor.
Haman demanded that everyone bow down to him, but Mordecai, being a
good Jew bowing only to God, would not bow to Haman.
Haman sent out a decree that Mordecai and all the Jews were to be killed
and that their belongings be made available for plunder.
Remember, God always has a plan. Mordecai heard 2 men plotting to kill the
king. He got word to Esther who sent word to Ahasuerus. The 2 men were
intercepted and no harm came to the king. This was recorded in the king’s books.
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But what did it matter if no one remembered?
Mordecai and all of the Jews were damned by Haman’s decree.
Mordecai felt such a heavy burden because he’d caused his people danger and
anguish. So he went to Esther and asked her to go to Ahasuerus to beg for the lives
of the Jews. Esther was afraid. But Mordecai said to her,
…if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will
rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's
family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal
dignity for just such a time as this." (Esther 4:14)
Could this really be a time of God’s planning. Esther began to plan a
banquet for the king. Hopefully she would gain his favor and his ear to plea
for her people.
Then God disturbed the king’s sleep one night. He asked his servants
to bring his books and read to him. On that night he was reminded of
Mordecai’s kindness to save him.
The story played out to where Haman was hung on the very gallows
he intended for Mordecai and the Jews were saved because of Esther’s
interceding for her people.
God chose Esther at the right time.
Timing is everything.
Timing can give the batter a home run.
Timing saved the Apollo astronauts. Timing saved Mordecai and the Jews.
In God’s perfect timing, a little Jewish orphan named Esther became
a queen.
In God’s perfect timing, a child named Jesus, born of the Spirit and a
young girl named Mary, became our Lord and Savior.
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In God’s perfect timing, eternal life can be ours for the asking.
May it be so in your life and mine.
Amen.
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