The acceptable year of the Lord

Luke 4:19

To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

The fascinating thing about the coming of Christ was its timeliness. The precision of the time of His advent was unparalleled by any other. For you see! The fullness of the time had come! Israel was ready, or so it should have been. The whole world was ready! The Gentile world was being made ready for the gospel of Christ to permeate among its many countries, nations, and languages. It was the acceptable year of the Lord! No other year was quite as acceptable! No other time was quite as precise. No other way would have been more impeccable. It was all planned by God. And it was planned so that Jesus could preach the gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captives, recover sight to the blind, and set at liberty them that were bruised. It was the ripe and ready time for the Lord Jesus to come on the scene and bring salvation.

The acceptable year! Yes, only that year was acceptable. None other was quite right. Even something so wonderful and perfect and beautiful and world changing as the coming of Christ had to happen at a certain time in order to have maximum effect. And I come to you, brethren, with the reminder that everything has its acceptable time. It is not that another time would be absolutely wrong, but it may not be best. There is an acceptable time, and an acceptable day, and an acceptable year. Just as there was only one perfect time for Christ to come, so is it for all other things of importance and impact.

Perhaps, my dear friend, there is something you are waiting on. You are waiting on that day that Christ will move and work and make things right. Maybe you are wishing for Him to come today! Or maybe you are weary and tired and restless with waiting on the Lord for that for which you have sought the Lord and prayed. Well, my beloved, the time will come, but it must be the acceptable year. The time must be right. In the fullness of the time, God sent forth His Son. The fullness of the time! All things must come together. All things must be prepared, and aligned, and made ready for what the Lord will do. Wait on that! Because otherwise things will not be right. Only when the time is acceptable will the outcome be acceptable. May we all learn this truth today.

“Father, we recognize that we often do not like to wait on the Lord. We hope and desire that the fullness of the time might be now. But let us wait and trust Your wisdom. If it were to happen now, the result might be menial, deficient, and short-lived. We want a maximum result! So we trust You, and we trust Your goodness. We look forward to the day in which that acceptable time will come. And we shall praise You for that. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”