When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. (Galatians 4:4 ESV)
When the fullness of time came! It is
not difficult for us to see in the case of Abraham how
his faith was brought into relation to God's time. The
time factor with Abraham was a very real one and was
perhaps one of the keenest and most acute factors for his
faith.
Again and again
we come upon a test of Abraham's faith along the line of the timing of God.
Indeed, from one standpoint, we may summarize the whole of his life and say
that it headed up at last to the triumph of faith upon that particular
factor. In the full Divine sense he never received the promises in his
lifetime. At the end of his life he was still looking for the fulfillment of
the promise. If his faith had given way he would naturally have taken the
attitude that, since the thing had not been fulfilled in so long a time and
in his lifetime, it all represented perhaps a big mistake on his part, a
false expectation, some misguidance, and so on. But right at the end, if the
letter to the Hebrews is to be taken as revealing the actual position, he
still believed. He believed, therefore, that God had His time for fulfilling
His purpose... and that, although it might not come in his own lifetime, it
nevertheless would come. But during his lifetime - within the compass of the
whole range of Divine purpose - there were instances of testing on the time
factor; and, having been tested on that factor, the promise was fulfilled.